
i 




I 



A 



LIFE OF POPE PIUS IX. 



BY 

JOHN R. G. HASSARD. 



" For a blameless man made haste to pray for the people, bringing forth the 
shield of his ministry, prayer. . . . For in the priestly robe which he wore 
was the whole world, . . . and thy majesty was written upon the diadem of 
his head." — Wisdom xviii. 21, 24. 




NEW YORK : 
The Catholic Publication Society Co., 

9 BARCLAY STREET* 
1878. 

IIS 



BX/37 

.-Ha 



Archbishopric of New York, 
Chancery Office, 266 Mulberry Street, 
New York, April 6, 1878. 

The following Life of Pius IX., by Mr. John 
JR. G. Hassard, is cordially approved and com- 
mended to the favorable notice of the public. 

Thomas S. Preston, 

Vicar-General aiid Chancellor, 



Copyright, The Catholic Publication Society Co., 1S78. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. PAGE. 

I. j "is Birth and Education, .... 7 

II. His Priesthood, 16 

III. The Good Bishop, 24 

IV. The Spirit of the Revolution, ... 32 
V. The Conclave, 51 

VI. The New Pope, 58 

VII. Conspiracv, 75 

VIII. Revolution, 84 

IX. Flight and Exile, ..... 100 
X. The Restoration, . . . . .111 

XI. The Time of Peace, 119 

XII. Piedmont and the Pope, .... 135 

XIII. Non Possumus, 148^ 

XIV. The Teacher of the World, . . .158 
XV. The Centenary of Peter, . . . .170 

XVI. The Vatican Council, . . . . 182 

XVII. The Seizure of Rome, .... 200 

XVIII. In the Vatican, 219 

XIX. The End. 237 



I 

I 



it 



PREFACE. 



BEING more anxious to show the spirit 
of the late pontificate than to write a full 
catalogue of its achievements, I have passed 
lightly over all but the greater incidents 
in this history of a quarter of a century 
of battles. Perhaps a rapid story may be 
acceptable to many Catholic readers who 
find fuller biographies too long and too 
costly. 

There are ample materials in French for 
a life of Pius IX. The work of J. M. Ville- 
franche in particular {Pie IX. Sa vie, son 
Histoire, son Siecle. 3d edition. Lyons. 
I ^77)y to which I have often resorted, is so 
good that I hope somebody will translate 
it. M. Alex, de Saint-Albin's Histoire de 



6 Preface. 

Pie IX. (2d edition. Paris. 1870) is valu- 
able for the period to which it refers. 
Mr. Legge cites many important docu- 
ments relating to the revolutionary move- 
ments of 1848 \ and other authorities are 
quoted from time to time in the body of 
this book. 

New York, April 6, 1878. 



Life of Pius IX. 



CHAPTER I. 

HIS BIRTH AND EDUCATION. 

EVER since the days of Hildebrand has the 



JL \l Church seen so remarkable a pontificate as 
that which has just closed. The long reign of Pius 
IX., far exceeding in duration that of any of his 
predecessors, and surpassing even the traditional 
" years of Peter," which a popular prediction de- 
clared that no pope should ever see, was crowded 
with momentous political events, involving the most 
important changes in the condition of a large part of 
the civilized world, and in nearly all these changes 
the Sovereign Pontiff was the central figure. Ideas 
which were just beginning to ripen into action at 
the time of his birth became the ruling force of 
Europe before the close of his career. The ancient 
society of Christian nations was broken up. Chris- 
tendom as a political entity ceased to exist. A new 
order of civilization, founded on new principles, took 
its place. In all these vicissitudes the Roman See 
was the one institution which suffered no change. 
Time and time again has it seemed to be the pivot 




Life of Pius IX. 



around which moved the revolutions of a world. 
And the part of Pius IX. in this turmoil of trans- 
formation was no less strange than eventful. The 
early years of his pontificate showed that there 
was no reasonable liberty of which the Church 
might not be the protector, and for a few weeks the 
whole world sang hymns of praise to the Pope who 
had proved the compatibility of the authority of 
Rome with political freedom, and her sympathy with 
all noble and patriotic aspirations. Yet the World 
and the Church were soon in conflict, though the 
Pope never changed. Empires and republics rose 
and fell. Princes turned democrats. Democrats 
assumed the crown. Kingdoms were blotted off 
the map. Nations sprang into life. The Church 
was stripped of all her temporal possessions. Gov- 
ernments which had been her stanchest supporters 
suddenly become her foes. And in the midst of 
this hurry of revolutions — political, social, and reli- 
gious — the Papacy alone retained its stability. The 
world beat against it, and beat in vain. When 
it was deemed friendless it was strongest. When 
it had no help except the unseen hand of Heaven, 
it was most formidable in the unity of its episco- 
pate, the affection of its children scattered far and 
wide over the earth, the clearness of its teachings, 
and the quick and full assent which all Catholics 
yielded to the authoritative voice that spoke to 
them from the Vatican. " There is, perhaps, hardly 
any pontiff," says Cardinal Manning, "who has 
governed the Church with more frequent exercises 



His Birth and Education, 9 



of supreme authority than Pius IX." " No pontiff 
from the beginning," adds the same distinguished 
authority in another place, "in all the previous suc- 
cession of two hundred and fifty-six popes, has ever 
so united the bishops with himself." 16 It seems to 
me," remarked the Pope to the Sacred College of 
Cardinals in 1873, " that as my pontificate is pro- 
longed your affection towards the Holy See, and 
your zeal in defence of its rights, are more and 
more inflamed and strengthened ; and everywhere 
your good example is copied." Certainly no pon- 
tiff since the primitive ages of the Church has been 
regarded with a more enthusiastic personal love, or 
has exercised so marked and far-reaching a per- 
sonal influence. A considerable time must elapse," 
observes a recent writer, " before we can estimate 
aright this great pontificate, so remarkable, so ex- 
ceptional in many ways. We stand, as it were, in 
its full glare ; we cannot take into account all its 
proportions, its vastness, its harmony, its impor- 
tance in the history of the Church. Those great 
commanders have been few who could comprehend 
all at once the full results of a successful battle ; 
but to the soldiers who make up the army, while 
the din of the combat is yet sounding in their ears, 
and the battle is still being fought around them, it 
is not given to take in at a glance all the features 
of the engagement, still less to know with precision 
what will be its effects upon the general fortune of 
the war. Yet some things there are which it is not 
difficult to discern at once, and concerning which no 



IO 



Life of Pius IX. 



additional fulness of knowledge or maturity of re- 
flection can well alter our judgment." It is with 
certain of these things — with the story of the private 
virtues of Pius IX., the outlines of his public life, and 
the most important works of. his pontificate — that 
the present biography will be chiefly concerned. 

The family of Mastai was an ancient and respect- 
able one of Lombardy. The first Mastai who bore 
the title of count removed into the duchy of Ur- 
bino, in Central Italy, towards the end of the 
seventeenth century, and, settling at the small but 
at that time not unimportant town of Sinigagiia, on 
the Adriatic, near Ancona, married an heiress of 
the place, and added her name, Ferretti, to his 
own. Count Jerome Mastai- Ferretti, the father of 
the Pontiff, was gonfalonier, or mayor, of Sinigag- 
iia. He was a gentleman of good character and 
small fortune. His wife, Catharine Solazzi, is said 
to have been distinguished both for beauty and vir- 
tue. She bore seven children, of whom the subject 
of this book, born at Sinigagiia, May 13, 1792, and 
baptized John Mary (Giovanni Maria), was the 
youngest. From his earliest years the boy was 
noted for a sweet and sunny temper, a loving dis- 
position, and a tender piety. At the age of eleven he 
was sent to a college kept by the Fathers of the 
Pious Schools at Volterra, and there he was a 
general favorite and an apt scholar, especially in 
mathematics. He had reached his seventeenth 
year when a terrible affliction fell upon him. He 



His Birtk and Education. 1 1 



became the victim of epileptic attacks of the most 
distressing kind; he was obliged to interrupt his 
studies, and his whole future became clouded. In 
company with his mother he made a pilgrimage to 
Loretto to beg the intercession of the Blessed Vir- 
gin. Although Heaven permitted the disease to try 
him some years longer, its severity began to abate, 
and in 1808 he received the tonsure at Volterra as 
the first step in the ecclesiastical career to which he 
had resolved to devote himself. Some unfriendly 
historians, who have given a grossly false account 
of his early years, will have it that he chose the 
military profession, and only turned to the Church 
when his epileptic attacks forced him to abandon 
the army ; others declare that, though he was not 
actually a soldier, he was a candidate for admission 
to the Pope's Noble Guard, and was rejected on 
account of the state of his health. These stories 
are disposed of by the direct testimony of Pius IX. 
himself. The editor of an Enciclopedia delP Eccle- 
siasticOj published at Rome, wishing to have an ac- 
curate sketch of the Pope's life, caused the proof- 
sheets to be submitted to the Holy Father, who cor- 
rected them with his own hand, and struck out the 
statement that in his youth he wished to join the 
army and to enter the Noble Guard. " c I never 
had any idea of the sort,' he said. When it was ob- 
jected that this was generally believed to be true, 
and had found way in many biographical sketches, 
he replied : ' This is the cause of the unfounded 
notion. When the first Napoleon invaded the 



12 



Life of Pius IX. 



pontifical provinces, he wished to gather round him 
a guardia nobile of all the noble youths of the 
Italian peninsula. A list was drawn up and pub- 
lished in the papers, and my name, without my 
knowledge, was put among the rest ; but as soon as 
I was informed of it I took care to have my name 
struck out. Napoleon's plan could not be carried 
out.' " * Certainly, there would have been nothing 
discreditable to a young man in wishing to be a 
soldier, but, as a matter of fact, he had early deter- 
mined to become a priest; and, accordingly, on 
leaving college he was sent to Rome (October, 
1808) to live and study with his uncle, Paolino 
Mastai-Ferretti, who was a canon of the Vatican 
and a prelate of the papal court, f 

The condition of the Christian world at this period 
was dark indeed. The Pope was in exile; the 
church was pillaged and persecuted. It was in the 
year of young Mastai-Ferretti's birth that the Red 
Republic was proclaimed in France, to be followed 
within a few months by the murder of Louis XVI. 

* This conclusive denial is quoted by Mr. Alfred Owen Legge in his 
Pius IJC. : The Story of His Life to the Restoration in 1850 (London, 
1875) ; yet with a singular indifference to the value of historical testi- 
mony, Mr. Legge professes himself " compelled to regard " the contrary 
statement " as well authenticated," because it is affirmed by the Duke 
of Sermoneta and others ! 

t More than sixty years afterwards, addressing the chapter of the 
basilica of St. M^ary Major, he said : 11 That church is doubly dear to 
me— first, because it is dedicated to the Mother of God ; secondly, be- 
cause it calls up certain souvenirs. When I first arrived in Rome, in 
my fresh youth, I went immediately to St. Mary Major, and I fancy I 
can see now, sitting in his confessional, the good Dominican who heard 
my first confession there.'* 



His Birth and Education. 13 



and Marie Antoinette, the Reign of Terror, the 
prohibition of Christian worship, the banishment 
of the clergy, the massacre of the flower of the 
French nobility, and what seemed to be the be- 
ginning of a general revolt against God all over 
Europe. At the time of which we now write, Pius 
VI., dethroned by the French Directory, had died 
in prison. Pius VII., made captive by Napoleon, 
was a prisoner in France. For the second time 
within ten years the States of the Church were 
under a foreign domination. The rule of the em- 
peror, whose object was to erect a church basely 
devoted to his interests, and to make a religion 
which he did not love the servant of his dynasty, 
was perhaps more brutal in Italy than in any other 
of the subjugated countries. Bishops were dispos- 
sessed, exiled, or imprisoned, as they are to-day in 
Germany under a similar system of imperial perse- 
cution. Priests were deported to Corsica or sent 
to the galleys at Toulon. John Mary's uncle, the 
canon, who was with Pius VII. on the night of the 
Pontiff's arrest by French soldiers, was forced to 
leave Rome. Another uncle, who was bishop of 
Pesaro, was imprisoned in Mantua. The young 
student returned to his parents to wait for better 
times. 

A few years were thus spent at Sinigaglia, where 
Canon Mastai, the uncle, had likewise sought refuge. 
The fall of Napoleon restored the Pope to his throne. 
He passed through Sinigaglia on his way to Rome, 
and the whole Mastai family went out to meet him 



Life of Pius IX. 



and receive his blessing. The schools of theology 
in the sacred city were now reopened, and young 
Mastai resumed his attendance at the classes of the 
Accademia Ecclesiastica, though for some time, as 
his epileptic attacks were still severe, he wore the 
lay dress. The long triumph of impiety and athe- 
ism had left the society of Rome in a frightful state 
of demoralization, and one of the first tasks of the 
regular and secular clergy, now recalled from prison 
and exile, was to rescue the imperilled young. Sun- 
day-schools were opened, volunteer catechists were 
enlisted from the nobility, and confraternities 
were organized with the special object of combat- 
ing the infidelity and indifference of the rising 
generation. Into these labors John Mary Mastai 
threw himself with a beautiful zeal, and when in 
1818 a mission was organized by Monsignor — after- 
wards Cardinal — Odescalchi and Monsignor Stram 
bi, Bishop of Macerata, to prosecute the same gooi 
work in Sinigaglia, the ardent, generous, and de- 
voted student was chosen to be their assistant. I 
was shortly after the close of this mission that, find- 
ing his malady much diminished, he obtained ad- 
mission to the order of subdeacon (December 18. 
1818). 

In the following spring he received a dispensa 
tion to be ordained deacon and priest; but he wai 
required, as a measure of precaution, to say Mass 
only in private and with the attendance of another 
priest. Before long he ventured to ask a special 
audience of Pope Pius VII., and to pray that this 



His Birth and Education. 15 



restriction might be removed. " Yes/' replied the 
kind old Pontiff, " I grant you this favor, and the 
more readily because I am persuaded that hence- 
forth the cruel disease will trouble you no more." 
And, in fact, from that time the attacks, if they 
ever returned at all, were so slight and rare that 
they ceased to be of any consequence. 



CHAPTER II. 



HIS PRIESTHOOD. 

IT was on Easter day, in 1819, that Father 
Mastai celebrated his first Mass, and the 
place which he chose for this memorable event was 
the obscure little church of St. Ann of the Carpen- 
ters (S. Anna dei Falegnami), attached as a chapel 
to an asylum for poor boys in the Via Giulia in 
Rome. He was no stranger in this modest chapel, 
for much of the time which he devoted to the in- 
struction of the young before his ordination was 
spent in this retreat, and the children had a strong 
affection for him. The asylum was founded some 
forty years before this time by a poor, illiterate 
mason named Giovanni Borgi, who for a long 
while had been in the habit of collecting destitute 
children from the streets, giving them food and 
shelter in his own house, causing them to be 
instructed in religion, and finally sending them 
out as apprentices to respectable mechanics. When 
his good work became known pious people offered 
their help, an association was organized, and Pope 
Pius VII. bought for it the building in the Via 
Giulia. The boys always called their protector 
"Tata Giovanni" (Daddy John), and so the home 



His Priesthood. 



came to be known as the Asylum Tata Giovanni. 
The good old mason had gone to his reward, but 
his work lived after him ; the number of the chil- 
dren was increased, and the scope of the chanty 
was greatly extended. 

The first pastoral charge of Father Mastai was 
over this asylum. He lived with the boys, ate at 
their table, and spent his whole private income in 
their service. At all periods of his life he had a 
remarkable power of attracting the love of those 
who came in contact with him, and it is not sur- 
prising that the poor little waifs formed the most 
devoted and almost romantic attachment to the 
warm-hearted and sympathetic young priest. He, 
on his part, never lost a tender regard for them, and 
interesting stories are told of the concern he used 
to show, even to the end of his life, in the welfare 
of those who had been his pupils during these first 
years of his priesthood. In 187 1 he recognized at 
one of his audiences a certain jeweller of Rome. 

" Ah ! " said the Pontiff, " I remember that you 
were always ready to take apprentices from Tata 
Giovanni. Tell me if you still have any among 
your workmen whom I knew." 

The jeweller hesitated; his memory was not so 
good as the Pope's. 

" You ought to have so-and-so," continued his 
Holiness. 

" Yes, Holy Father; I have him still." 
"Are you pleased with him? Has he any 
family ? Is he doing well ? " And then Pius IX. 



i8 



Life of Pius IX. 



went on to tell of circumstances connected with 
this workman, to whom he had taught the cate- 
chism a half-century before. After the occupation 
of Rome by Victor Emanuel the revenues of the 
Asylum Tata Giovanni were cut off by the Italian 
Government, and the Pope made it an annual al- 
lowance from his own purse. 

Father Mastai spent four years at this institution, 
holding also during part of the time a canonry of 
St. Mary in via Lata, a little church on the Corso, 
with an oratory in which pious tradition relates that 
St. Paul and St. Luke used to preach. The first 
employment which brought him into public notice 
was a mission to the New World. 

In 1822 the Government of Chili sent Archdea- 
con Cienfuegos to Rome to try to establish direct 
ecclesiastical relations between the republic and 
the Holy See. The condition of the Church in the 
South American States was deplorable. Bishoprics 
were vacant, because the Spanish crown angrily 
insisted upon the right of presentation to sees 
which the success of the war of independence had 
long since removed from Spanish jurisdiction. The 
mother-country still asserted the authority which 
she no longer even attempted to enforce, and re- 
sented all proposals to recognize, however indirectly, 
the de facto separation of the revolted provinces. 
It was at length determined by Pope Pius VII. to 
disregard the protests of Spain, and to send to Chili 
a vicar-apostolic, in order to reorganize the Church 
in that country. The choice fell upon Monsignor 



His Priesthood. 



19 



Muzi, then auditor of the nunciature at Vienna; 
Canon Mastai, on the recommendation of Cardinal 
della Genga — then cardinal-vicar, and destined 
soon to be Pope under the name of Leo XII. — was 
attached to the mission as adjunct ; and a priest 
named Sallusti was appointed secretary. They 
sailed from Genoa, October 1 1, 1823, in a brig called 
the Eloysa^ which flew the Sardinian flag, and the 
envoy Cienfuegos bore them company. It was a 
long, difficult, and dangerous journey in those days 
from Italy to the Pacific coast of South America. 
More than once the apostolic delegation narrowly 
escaped shipwreck. Stress of weather drove them 
into the Spanish port of Palma, in the island 
of Majorca, where the governor roughly ordered 
Archbishop Muzi and Canon Mastai to come on 
shore and give an account of themselves. On the 
absurd pretence that the country to which they 
were bound was in rebellion and must not be 
visited without permission of the Cortes, the 
embassy was locked up in jail. " Then," said Pius 
IX., in telling this adventure long years afterward, 
" I realized the necessity of the papal independence. 
They sent me a ration of food every day from 
the ship, but I was allowed neither letters nor 
papers. I was initiated, however, on this occa- 
sion into the little stratagems of solitary prisoners, 
for we hid our correspondence in loaves of bread ; 
and so it was that I learned of the victory of the 
Duke of Angouleme which restored Ferdinand 
VII. to the throne of Spain. After that they did 



20 



Life of Pius IX. 



not trouble themselves any more about a poor 
canon, and they let us go." 

A voyage of three months brought them to 
Buenos Ayres, and there they began a toilsome 
ride of two months across the continent. They 
travelled in a caravan of three covered carts, stop- 
ping occasionally to celebrate Mass, or to rest, or 
to receive civilities at the towns and settlements 
along the route, just escaping massacre by a band 
of Indians who attempted to waylay them, crossing 
the Andes on mules, and entering Santiago at last 
to the tones of the Te Deum. 

During this trying journey the cheerfulness, 
vivacity, and simple piety of Canon Mastai were 
the admiration and delight of his companions. 
Descending the slope of the Cordillera towards 
Santiago, they stopped one night at a miserable 
wayside inn, where they found an English officer 
named Miller lying unconscious in a raging fever. 
He was a stranger and a Protestant ; but it was 
enough that he was suffering, and when the em- 
bassy went on its way the young canon remained 
behind to nurse the Englishman, tending him with 
the affection of a brother until he was well enough 
to continue his journey. On another occasion the 
canon found an Indian dying in a wretched hut. 
He placed himself by the side of the poor man, 
comforted his last hours, instructed and baptized 
him, and never left him until the soul had taken its 
flight. Then he wrapped the body in his own 
best linen, and buried it with a cross above the 



I 
i 



His Priesthood. 



21 



grave; and finally, after instructing and baptizing 
the Indian's widow and children, he divided his 
purse and clothing with them. 

In going by sea from Valparaiso to Callao the 
vessel of the embassy, caught near the coast in a 
gale, was driving upon the rocks when a fisherman 
put off in his boat, boarded them in the midst of 
the storm, and brought them through intricate 
passages into the harbor of Arica. The next day 
Canon Mastai visited the hut of this daring pilot, 
and left with him a purse containing about four 
hundred dollars. After becoming Pope he sent 
the man a second purse of equal value and his 
picture. The fisherman was overwhelmed with 
gratitude. The first four hundred dollars had 
proved the making of his fortune. He gave the 
second to the poor, and placed the picture of the 
Pope in a little chapel which he had built on a 
spot overlooking the sea. 

The time spent in this mission was not fruitless, 
for the apostolic delegate succeeded in effecting 
some improvement in the condition of the dis- 
organized South American Church, and Canon 
Mastai, in frequent excursions hither and thither, 
revived the faith and zeal of the people, and learn- 
ed much about the wants of religion in that 
part of the world which he remembered when he 
came to the pontifical throne. One important re- 
sult of his journey was the foundation of the South 
American College in Rome; it was not until twen- 
ty five years later that this establishment was 



22 



Life of Pius IX. 



opened, but the idea of it is distinctly traceable to 
the apostolic mission to Chili in 1824. The prin- 
cipal immediate object of the mission, however — 
the restoration of the episcopacy — was not accom- 
plished. The Chilian Government raised so many 
difficulties that there was every reason to doubt its 
good faith; and at last, after many disappoint- 
ments, the embassy returned to Rome. Their 
vessel had gone around Cape Horn to meet them, 
and they embarked at Valparaiso October 30, 
1824. 

Immediately after his arrival home Canon Mas- 
tai was appointed domestic prelate to His Holiness 
Leo XII., and placed in charge of the Hospital of 
St. Michael. This famous institution was a city in 
itself, and its administration was a real govern- 
ment. Founded two centuries ago, it had grown, 
by the liberality of successive popes, to be one of 
the greatest and grandest asylums in existence — 
a house of refuge for the young, a retreat for the 
aged and infirm, a hospital for the sick, a reforma- 
tory for Magdalens, a home for virtuous girls, and, 
besides all that, a school of arts and industries. 
When Monsignor Mastai assumed the presidency 
of this vast and complicated charity, every depart- 
ment of it was in a miserable state of disorganiza- 
tion. Nearly all the earnings of the boys and girls 
in the industrial schools went towards the support 
of the establishment, and yet there was an enor- 
mous deficit in the revenues. Bankruptcy seemed 
at hand. The new president took up his task with 



His Priesthood. 



23 



the enthusiasm of a reformer and the practical 
sagacity of a man of business. In two years the 
disorder was at an end. The expenses of the in- 
stitution were brought within its income, yet its 
charity was enlarged rather than restricted, and a 
large part of the earnings of the children was paid 
into a savings fund, to be returned to them when 
they went out into the world. Monsignor Mastai 
had obtained this remarkable result in part by his 
talent for business; but not wholly by that, for 
when the work was done his own patrimony had 
disappeared. u Of what use is money to a priest," 
said he, " except to be spent in the cause of 
charity ?" 



CHAPTER III. 



THE GOOD BISHOP. 

AFTER about two years of this active work at 
the hospital Monsignor Mastai was appoint- 
ed Archbishop of Spoleto in Umbria. He was 
consecrated on the 3d of June, 1827, by Cardinal 
Castiglioni, afterwards Pius VIII. It is related 
that, having given away all the money at his com- 
mand, he was obliged to sell the last acre of his 
estate to defray the expenses of his installation, and 
he entered his diocese actually penniless. 

Promotion in this case meant a great increase of 
labor, hardship, and privation. The revenues of 
the see were small, and the needs of the people 
were great. Religion, society, and industry had 
all been grievously wounded by the disorders of the 
past thirty years, and just then, moreover, the spirit 
of revolution and infidelity had a strong hold upon 
the minds of the middle classes. The post of a 
bishop at such a time, in a poor and distracted 
city, seemed not one to be envied. But the gen- 
tleness and unbounded generosity of Archbishop 
Mastai quickly endeared him to the whole popu- 
lation. He filled his diocese with good works, 
founding schools and chanties, promoting the 

24 



The Good Bishop, 



25 



establishment of factories — for he knew that idle- 
ness and hunger were at the root of many of the 
evils of the day — and taking a personal interest in 
the comfort and prosperity of his people. From 
his youth to the very end of his life he was prodi- 
gal in alms- giving, and was often left destitute by 
his benefactions. A poor woman applied to him 
for help at Spoleto when his purse was empty; he 
could find nothing else of value, so he took a silver 
dish from his table and bade her put it in the 
pawn. On another occasion, after he had been 
translated from Spoleto to Imola, he was applied 
to by a man who was hard pressed by a creditor. 

" How much do you need ? " asked the arch- 
bishop. 

" Monsignor, the debt is forty crowns." 

" I have not a copper, my poor friend," said the 
good pastor, "but take these silver candlesticks 
and sell them." 

The silversmith to whom they were offered re- 
cognized on them the archbishop's arms, and has- 
tened to the palace. 

" Monsignor," he cried, " you have been robbed 
of your candlesticks, and I have .the thief." 

u No, no, " was the reply ; u I have not been rob- 
bed. Buy them, if they suit you." 

The dealer returned to his customer, and, learn- 
ing the whole story, gave him what he required. 
Then he carried the candlesticks back to the arch- 
bishop. 

" Monsignor," he said, " I have advanced the 



26 



Life of Pius IX. 



forty crowns, and you can give them to me at 
some convenient time; but I will not take your 
silver plate." 

The archbishop gave away even the clothes that 
he really needed. Sometimes he lacked the money 
to buy food ; and once, having invited a bishop to 
visit him, he pawned his watch to pay for the din- 
ner. 

Pope Leo XII. died in February, 1829. Pius 
VIII. died on the 1st of December, 1830. The 
next conclave was a long one, and it was not until 
the 2d of February, 1831, that the deliberations of 
the Sacred College came to an end with the elec- 
tion of Gregory XVI. Within three days the new 
Pope was confronted by an extensive insurrection. 
The revolt had been long in preparation, and the 
revolution in France which drove Charles X. from 
his throne precipitated the outbreak. All central 
Italy was violently disturbed, but, although the 
insurgents were well enough organized to provoke 
a rising on the same day in several cities of the 
Romagna, they seem to have had no settled plan, 
and to have been animated by no more definite 
purpose than a general hostility to religion and 
hatred of the existing government. " Some," says 
the Liberal Italian writer, Farini, rt wished to place 
the sons of Hortense Eeauharnais at the head of 
the Italian movement; others, some Italian prince; 
and others had plans differing from both of these. 
In the Roman States the conspirators were for the 
most part Voltairians, or indifferentists in religion, 



The Good Bishop. 



27 



materialists in philosophy, and nearly all of them 
constitutionalists in politics — some after the French, 
some after the Spanish, model. Few had any well- 
defined notions of a philosophical or national sys- 
tem. The greater number cared only for destroy- 
ing. Of building up they thought it would be 
time to take heed afterwards." 

The revolt soon spread from the Romagna to 
the neighboring provinces, and before the middle 
of February it involved Spoleto. The pontifical 
governor fled for his life. Even the charitable 
archbishop was in danger. " I made my escape to 
the woods," said he many years afterwards, "and 
had gone some ten miles or so when, overcome by 
fatigue, I entered a little hut. There I found two 
poor women at work, and I shall never forget the 
sorrow with which they beheld their archbishop in 
such a plight, or the kindness with which they 
shared with me their scanty meal of bread and 
water." His exile, however, was short. For a 
little while after his return he was charged with the 
civil administration of the province. 

The complicity in this revolt of the two sons of 
Hortense Beauharnais, step-daughter of Napoleon 
Bonaparte and wife of Louis Bonaparte, King of 
Holland, has been alluded to. These sons were 
Napoleon, who died shortly afterwards of disease 
contracted in the insurrectionary campaign, and 
Louis, who became emperor under the name of 
Napoleon III. It is related that on the defeat of 
the enterprise Louis, being in imminent danger of 



28 



Life of Pins IX. 



arrest, presented himself one night at the door of 
Archbishop Mastai, and owed his safety to that 
kindest of men, who concealed him for some time 
in his palace, and finally smuggled him across the 
frontier. The story rests upon no very secure 
foundation, but it has been often published and re- 
mains uncontradicted. There is another anecdote, 
relating to the same period, which seems to be 
much better authenticated. A force of four or five 
thousand insurgents approached Spoleto, close 
pressed by the pontifical troops on the one side 
and menaced by the advance of an Austrian army 
on the other. The archbishop went out to meet 
them, and, showing the futility of resistance, per- 
suaded them to lay down their arms. To satis- 
fy their immediate wants he gave them several 
thousand crowns. Next he visited the Austrian 
commander, and induced him to respect the in- 
formal amnesty which had thus been concluded; 
and finally he repaired to Rome to beg the Papal 
pardon for the rebels. On his return to Spoleto 
the grateful inhabitants took the horses from his 
carriage and drew him home in triumph. 

One day an agent of the police brought him a 
list of persons in Spoleto whom he had discovered 
to be implicated in the insurrection. The arch- 
bishop took the paper and threw it into the fire. 
" My good friend," said he, " you do not know 
your business, or mine. When the wolf means to 
fall upon the flock he does not warn the shep- 
herd." 



The Good Bishop, 



29 



In December, 1832, Archbishop Mastai was 
translated to the see of Imola. This was a sim- 
ple bishopric, but it was a more important post 
than Spoleto, and was regarded as a step towards 
the dignity of cardinal. The promotion to the 
princely purple came in due course; it was pro- 
claimed December 14, 1840, having been reserv- 
ed in petto since December 23, 1839, and Cardinal 
Mastai took his title from the church of SS. Peter 
and Marcellinus. His life at Imola was like his 
life at Spoleto. He was rarely seen at Rome, 
even after his creation as cardinal. He was al- 
most unknown to the courtiers of the Quirinal. 
His time, his strength, and his income were all 
spent in relieving the needs of his people. If there 
is one religious work for which, more than another, 
his administration of the diocese of Imola deserves 
to be remembered, it is the education of the- clergy. 
In the general wreck which followed the French 
invasion under Napoleon the old theological 
schools had been swept away. The zealous bishop 
founded a seminary, opened and endowed a house 
of retreat for the priests, and established a Bible 
Academy at his residence for the discussion of 
sacred subjects. He introduced the Sisters of 
Charity from France. He invited also from 
France a community of Sisters of the Good Shep- 
herd, endowing a house for them from his private 
means, and when they arrived he received them at 
the episcopal palace and waited on them at table. 
He opened an asylum for poor boys on the plan 



3o 



Life of Pins IX. 



of Tata Giovanni. He repaired the churches. 
He multiplied the schools. The revenues of the 
see of Imola were much larger than those of Spo- 
leto ; but, as usual, the bishop was always giving 
and always poor. 

The political and social condition of central 
Italy became more and more deplorable, yet Car- 
dinal Mastai, devoted to his flock, was surrounded 
by a grateful population. Once, it is said, a party 
of revolutionists broke into his house with the wild 
purpose of carrying him off prisoner, together with 
two cardinals who were his visitors. On another 
occasion, while praying before the Blessed Sacra- 
ment, he confronted three Assassins who had wound- 
ed a vouns: man in the cathedral of Imola; he 
drove them from the church, and his courage 
saved the young man's life. 'The revolutionist 
Felice Orsini, executed in 1858 for an attempt to 
assassinate the Emperor of the French, was a lad 
living at Spoleto at this period, and he relates in 
his memoirs that, having accidentally killed a man, 
he owed Ins liberty to the bishop, who protected him 
from prosecution and became security for his good 
behavior. These are almost the only incidents of 
Archbishop Mastai's career at Imola which the 
historian finds recorded. The fourteen years of 
his useful and inconspicuous labor at that place 
were a golden time of peace and consolation, 
whose story is written only in heaven. They were 
a time, moreover, of providential preparation for 
the place to. which he was soon to be raised. 



The Good Bishop. 



31 



He came forth from this retreat with a character 
enriched by the daily practice of virtue, a disposi- 
tion sweetened by the habit of self-sacrifice, a re- 
solution strengthened by reliance upon God, and a 
heavenly courage that was proof against the threats 
and buffets of the world. Modest, however, as his 
retirement had been, his holy life was not unknown 
at Rome, and when Gregory XVI. died on the 1st 
of June, 1846, Cardinal Mastai had already been 
much spoken of as the fittest person to rule the 
Church in the trying days that were plainly at 
hand. 

He was at this time fifty- four years of age. His 
figure was of medium height and well proportioned, 
his frame rather sturdy, his bearing erect and dig- 
nified, his gestures were full of unstudied grace, 
and his walk was described as "princely." Yet 
there was a simplicity in his manner that charmed 
everybody, and the graciousness ot Christian hu- 
mility softened and adorned his demeanor. There 
is a story of a peasant who sought an audience of 
him, expecting to see a potentate of dazzling gran- 
deur, and who came away astonished, exclaiming: 
" E un' uomo come me / — He is a man like me!" 
His features were noble and regular, his complexion 
was a rich olive, his eyes were large, soft, and blue. 
But the chief beauty of his face was the gentle and 
benevolent expression that shone in his glance and 
played about his shapely mouth. This was an 
attraction which age and trouble never destroyed. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE REVOLUTION. 




HEN Cardinal Mastai drove out of the city 
of Imola in June, 1846, and, followed by 



the prophetic cries of the admiring populace, " Long 
live our Pope !" proceeded to Rome to attend the 
conclave, he left for ever the peaceful life which 
had become dear to him, and entered upon a long 
course of anxiety and pain. The aspect of almost 
the whole world was threatening. The anti-Chris- 
tian conspiracy which had kept Europe in turmoil 
for nearly a hundred years was ripe for revolution, 
and the least acute observer could see that a great 
political crisis was near at hand. It might be said 
without much exaggeration that men stood for a 
moment with ear intent and bated breath waiting for 
the inevitable explosion. 

It would be idle, in the compass of this little 
book, to explore the causes of the convulsions of 
1830-1848. They were complex and deep-rooted. 
The revolutionary propaganda of this period found 
almost every country of Europe ready for combus- 
tion. Some states were rotten with social and 
moral disorders of long standing ; some, like Po- 
land, writhed under an oppression which moved the 

32 



The Spirit of the Revolution. 



33 



sympathies of the whole world ; some fretted under 
the restrictions of antiquated forms of government 
unsuited to the wants of an expanding society; 
some were cursed with bad rulers, some with an 
infidel population. The vitality of the principles 
of the great French Revolution had not been ex- 
hausted ; on the contrary, they had been dissemi- 
nated all over the continent, and everywhere they 
bore fruit. Recent writers have represented the 
pontificate of Pius IX. as a prolonged struggle 
between priestly despotism and the unconquerable 
popular yearning for national unity. But it is cer- 
tain that the sentiment of unity was not the origin 
of the revolutionary movement in the Italian States, 
and will not be its end. The movement was active 
before national unity was thought of, and is still 
active after national unity has been attained. 

The central influence which animated and di- 
rected the tendencies towards revolt in the various 
countries of Europe was the conspiracy of the se- 
cret societies. There was not a corner of the con- 
tinent in which their power was not felt, and at the 
death of Gregory they had become one of the chief 
forces in European politics. Intimately allied with 
Freemasonry, their origin dates back to a remote, 
uncertain period. They were strong and danger- 
ous before the world suspected their existence. 
The Illuminati, founded by Weishaupt among the 
Masonic lodges of Bavaria, and aiming at the 
most radical disintegration of society as well as the 
overthrow of Christianity, are regarded as the im- 



34 



Life of Phis IX. 



mediate progenitors of the secret societies of our 
day. They were formidable a hundred years ago. 
From Bavaria Illuminism was introduced into Aus- 
tria, Saxony, Holland 3 Italy, and Switzerland; it 
was carried to Paris by Mirabeau, who was initiat- 
ed in Germany; and it was united with Masonry 
all over France. Carbonarism, the worst of iis 
numerous offspring, was organized in the Neapoli- 
tan States about 1S14 or earlier, and in five or six 
years it not only spread over the whole Italian 
peninsula but obtained a firm foothold in France 
and Spain. Other secret societies — the Adelphi, 
the Federati, the Decisi, the Guelphs, the Reform- 
ed Emancipated Patriots — were formed in various 
parts of Italy, all pursuing the same revolutionary 
», and anti-Christian objects, and all more or less regu- 
larly affiliated both with the parent Carbonari and 
with the Masonic lodges. Yet while they co-ope- 
rated in the work of destruction they were utterly 
at variance in their ideas of what ought to come 
after. The Italians were so far from regarding 
themselves as one people that a real union did not 
occur to them as desirable ; and even when the 
Carbonari attempted in 183 1 to drive the Austrians 
out of North Italy and form a federation under the 
Duke of Modena, they did not dream of including 
in it the whole peninsula or of creating an Italian 
nation. They were almost as busy fomenting revo- 
lutions in France and Spain as in regenerating their 
own country. France, indeed, they never left at 
peace. Secret societies were busy simultaneously 



The Spirit of the Revolution, 35 



in Russia, in Greece, in Ireland, and even in the 
Swiss republic. In 182 1 the Italian revolutionist, 
General Pepe, founded at Madrid u an internation- 
al secret society of the advanced political reformers 
of all the European states," and from Spain he car- 
ried the organization into Portugal and France. 
Mazzini made a much more effective union of the 
revolutionary elements in 1834 when, with the aid 
of Italian, Polish, and German refugees, he found- 
ed at Berne the society of Young Europe. The 
organization of Young Germany, Young Poland, 
and Young Switzerland dates from the same time 
and place, and Switzerland became the centre of 
all the agitations of the Continent. 

Many of these and similar associations professed 
an excellent object. The Tugendbund, for in- 
stance, founded by the Prussian Prime Minister 
Stein in 1807, originally aimed at the deliverance 
of Germany from the foreign yoke imposed by 
Napoleon I. ; Young Poland captivated the noble, 
the ardent, and the patriotic; the Carbonari had 
an alluring watchword in the Independence of 
Italy. But there was an ulterior purpose known 
only to the initiated, and perhaps not always con- 
templated even by them at the beginning of their 
enterprise. That purpose — the bond which united 
all the leaders of the conspiracy from the Irish Sea 
to the Grecian Archipelago, from Gibraltar to No- 
va Zembla — was the establishment everywhere of 
an atheistic democracy. Kings and priests were 
equally hateful to the " Illuminated." There was 



36 



Life of Pins IX. 



to be no recognition of God in their republic. 
They were hostile not only to the Catholic Church 
as an organization but to Christianity as a. moral 
influence. Illuminism sounded as early as 1777 
the key-note of the whole movement. Find el, the 
Masonic historian of Freemasonry, declares that 
" the most decisive agent 99 in giving the order a 
political and anti-religious character was "that in- 
tellectual movement known under the name of 
English deism, which boldly rejected all revelation 
and all religious dogmas, and under the victorious 
banner of reason and criticism broke down ail bar- 
riers in its path." But Weishaupt found still too 
much " political and religious prejudice M remaining 
in the Freemasons, and consequently devised a 
system which, as he expressed it, would " attract 
Christians of every communion and gradually free 
them from all religious prejudices. " The • c illumi- 
nation " of the brethren was to be accomplished by 
a course of gradual education in which Christianity 
was carefully ignored. It was only in the higher 
degrees that the initiated were taught that the fall 
of man meant nothing but the subjection of the in- 
dividual to civil society ; that " illumination n con- 
sisted in getting rid of all governments; and that 
" the secret associations were gradually and silent- 
ly to possess themselves of the government cf the 
states, making use for this purpose of the means 
which the wicked use for attaining their base 
ends." We quote this from the discourse read at 
initiation into one of the higher degrees, and dis- 



The Spirit of the Revolution. 37 



covered when the papers of the fraternity were 
seized by the Elector of Bavaria in 1785. The 
same document continues : " Princes and priests 
are in particular the wicked whose hands we must 
tie up by means of these associations, if we cannot 
wipe them out altogether." Patriotism was defin- 
ed as a narrow-minded prejudice ; and, finally, the 
illuminated man was taught that everything is 
material, that religion has no foundation, that all 
nations must be brought back, either by peaceable 
means or by force, to their pristine condition of 
unrestricted liberty, for " all subordination must 
vanish from the face of the earth." The cere- 
monies of initiation into the lodges of the Carbo- 
nari remind us strongly of this explanation of the 
principles of Illuminism. The recruit was taught 
the same doctrine in both : that man had every- 
where fallen into the hands of oppressors, whose 
authority it was the mission of the enlightened to 
cast off. Here, however, as in the earlier society, 
the pagan character of the proposed new life was 
only revealed by degrees to those who were pre- 
pared for it. The conspirators seem to have ac- 
commodated their system of education to the pe- 
culiarities of national training and disposition. For 
example, they humored the religious tendencies of 
the Italians by retaining the name of God and the 
image of the crucifix in the ceremonial of the low- 
er degrees, and even published a forged bull, in the 
name of Pope Pius VII., approving the Carbonari; 
while in the training of Young Germany just a 



38 



Life of Phis IX. 



contrary course was adopted. 11 We are obliged to 
treat new-comers very cautiously," says a report 
from a propagandist committee established among 
the Germans in Switzerland, " to bring them step 
by step into the right road, and the principal 
thing in this respect is to show them that religion 
is nothing but a pile of rubbish." Just so when 
Carbonarism was introduced into France : the reli- 
gious phraseology and ceremonies which had been 
grafted upon its ritual for the satisfaction of Ita- 
lian neophytes did not harmonize with French 
ideas, and all Catholic expressions were conse- 
quently expunged from French copies of the sta- 
tutes. Indeed, the rampant atheism of the secret 
societies of Germany and France has always been 
notorious. Of the horrible manifestations of im- 
piety among the higher degrees in Italy I hesi- 
tate to speak, lest I be accused of sensational exag- 
geration. Most of what I have thus far said of 
the principles and practices of the Carbonari and 
the Illuminated is quoted from their own authori- 
ties, and may be found in the work of their apolo- 
gist, Thomas Frost.* For a more startling picture 
of their inner mysteries the reader is referred to 
Father Bresciani,t who lived in Rome in 1848 and 
had direct testimony of facts which almost defy be- 
lief. Mr. Frost, however, gives a glimpse of the 
worse than pagan spirit of Carbonarism when he 

* The Secret Societies of the European Revolution, 1776-1S76. By 
Thomas Frost. London. 1876. 
\ The Jew of Verona. English translation. Baltimore. 1854. 



The Spirit of the Revolution. 



39 



describes the initiation into the second degree — a 
ceremony wherein the candidate, crowned with 
thorns and bearing a cross, personated our divine 
Lord, and knelt to ask pardon of Pilate, Caiphas, 
and Herod, represented by the grand master and 
two assistants, the pardon being granted at the in- 
tercession of the assembled Carbonari ! In all the 
societies an abstract morality was taught which was 
not the morality of Jesus Christ, and laws were 
laid down at variance with the laws of the state. 
Indeed, the members were carefully taught, by 
direct precept and by still more effective insinua- 
tion, that the supreme authority for them, above 
the secular power and above the Church, was the 
lodge. The society sought to detach them com- 
pletely from the state by means of a code of laws 
distinct in form, and they were even forbidden to 
refer cases of litigation to the ordinary tribunals 
until they had been brought before the grand 
lodge, and reasons assigned for permitting 'a fur- 
ther investigation in a " pagan court." 

But the chief agency which separated the asso- 
ciates from the outside world was the dagger. In 
the oath of initiation the newly-admitted member 
was required to invoke the most terrible penalties 
upon his own head if he violated his pledges to the 
order, and what those penalties were may be seen 
from the following articles of the secret statutes : 

u Members who disobey the orders of this secret 
society, and they who unveil its mysteries, shall be 
poignarded without remission. 



4o 



Life of Phis IX. 



11 The secret tribunal shall pronounce sentence by de- 
signating one or two associates for its immediate execu- 
tion. 

" The associate who shall refuse to execute the sen- 
tence pronounced shall be deemed a perjurer, and as 
such put to death on the spot. 

"If the condemned victim try to escape by flight, he 
shall be pursued everywhere without delay, and struck 
by an invisible hand, even though he should fly for 
refuge to the bosom of his mother or to the tabernacle 
of Christ. 

il Each secret tribunal shall be competent not only to 
judge guilty members of the society, but also to put to 
death all the persons whom it may devote to death.*' 

Such was the terrible hidden agency which 
promoted the revolutions of the whole continent 
during the first half of the present century. I have 
said that it was only in the work of destruction, in 
hostility to the Christian religion and to social 
order, that the affiliated, societies had their bond of 
union. Unity and Independence became after a 
while the cry by which they deceived the Italian 
people; but they were quite as active in France 
and Spain, where national unity was always secure, 
and in Switzerland, where popular rights were guar- 
anteed by republican institutions, as in Italy, where 
petty states were governed by absolute princes and 
Austrian armies. And if there had been any doubt 
as to their ultimate purposes, that doubt must 
have been dispelled by their course during the past 
few years. The secret societies are now plotting 
as desperately against United Italy as they plotted, 



The Spirit of the Revolution. 



41 



before 1870, against the governments of divided 
Italy. Mazzini never pretended that their work 
was done when a king was set up in the Pope's 
palace. He died conspiring against Victor Ema- 
nuel and urging Italy to press on to " the goal of the 
revolution." The anniversary of his death was 
celebrated in March, 1877, by democratic demon- 
strations all over Italy, which the government was 
unable to suppress; the speakers at these meetings 
declared the commemorative ceremonies to be not 
merely a token of remembrance but a " promise," 
and they referred openly to " a time for action " 
which was yet to come ; while simultaneously a 
seditious circular, claiming for the Carboneria the 
right " to indicate and open the way to the king- 
dom of liberty, to the triumph of justice, to social 
amelioration upon earth," was distributed among 
the ranks of the Italian army. A few days later 
several bands of Internationalists raised a revolt 
near Naples; and on the person of one of the 
conspirators arrested at that time was found the fol- 
lowing declaration of principles : 

" International Association of Working-men. 

" Federation of Rome and Latium. 
" Club of the Roman Socialist Propaganda. 

"The club of the Roman Socialist Propaganda, accept- 
ing the general statutes of the International Association 
of Working-men as the rule of conduct which the prole- 
tariat must observe for its complete emancipation, estab- 
lishes the following principles, which Will constitute its 
revolutionary programme : 



4 2 



Life of Pins IX. 



" In the first place, the said club wishes the supernatu- 
ral removed from all the ties of life, as it tolerates no ty- 
ranny, either human or divine. Nevertheless, it has no 
intention of imposing atheist principles on the consciences 
of the members. It declares that it respects in the mem- 
bers themselves an}? - religious principle whatever which 
they may* cherish. It reserves to itself the right to com- 
bat superstition and error everywhere, confident that the 
development of science and instruction in the working- 
classes will destroy all idea of the supernatural, or of re- 
ligion which betrays itself under any form of worship. 
Nevertheless, since the society of the future which it un- 
dertakes to found must consist only of producers, and 
since from this follows the disappearance of all consumers 
who are not producers, it denies emphatically the right 
of any one to make capital or to speculate on the belief 
of others. 

" As for individual property, the said club, considering 
that the source and first cause of misery, of degradation, 
of servitude among the working-classes is precisely the ac- 
cumulation In the hands of a few of the primary instru- 
ments and material of labor, declares it to be, on these 
grounds, supremely necessary for the emancipation of 
the working-men to destroy this accumulation in all its 
manifestations. Moreover, recognizing on the other 
hand that collective property, and hence the collectivism 
of the instruments of labor and production, are the only 
means for the total emancipation of the proletariat, the 
said club proposes to fight with all its strength, moral 
and material, for the destruction of individual property, 
and for the triumph and constitution of ' collectivism.' 

" And since it recognizes that under the name of the 
state is summed up the first cause of the slavery of the 
human race, and since the state can only have in view, 
under whatever complexion it maybe presented, the main- 
tenance of the existing economic and social privileges, 



The Spirit of the Revolution, 43 



the said club declares itself, on these grounds, in favor of 
true anarchy as the negation of all power whatever which 
is imposed from high to low, or vice versa. 

" Denying the supernatural and denying the state, it 
follows as a necessary consequence that the club makes it 
its business to destroy the actual ' legal family,' there not 
being in the future any other hereditary duty than that 
of working with all energy for the development of science 
and industry, and there being no recognition among the 
men of the future of any other tie than that of mutual as- 
sistance and of the natural and brotherly affection which 
nature imposes upon man. 

" Further, and as a logical consequence of the above 
reasoning, recognizing as the basis of justice and mo- 
rality that all religious and social ties whatever must give 
way to the full liberty of union between man and woman, 
the said club declares in favor of this latter, knowing as 
it does that man as well as woman has the full right of 
free union without the intervention of any other in this 
purely personal act. However, as complete justice ought 
to be the foundation of the society of the future, the club 
recognizes that such union ought to be founded on reci- 
procal affection, esteem, and respect. Moreover, the said 
club desires that the society of the future should exercise 
surveillance over such union, in order that the rights of 
woman, as of man, be not prejudiced by any caprice 
whatever. 

" Furthermore, the club recognizes in male and female 
the duty to rear and educate children always under the 
surveillance of the society, so long as these are not in 
a fit state to be taken as children of the society itself, 
to be thereafter trained and disciplined in the several 
institutions, and finally sent to those trades and arts 
which they shall freely select without pressure on the 
part of any one. It denies, however, any mastership by 
parents over children, recognizing these as children of 



44 



Life of Pius IX. 



society, to which they shall be bound by special duties 
and rights. 

u On this basis the Roman Socialist Club declares that 
it will co-operate with all its might for the foundation of 
the social organism of the future as that which it recog- 
nizes to be the genuine bulwark of morality, of equality, 
and of justice." 

Undoubtedly these destructive and atheistic prin- 
ciples were not held by a large proportion of the 
revolutionary party in any country, but they con- 
stituted the true esoteric doctrine of many 
of the secret societies, and wherever the revolt 
gained a temporary success they were sure to mani- 
fest themselves and to shape the course of the in- 
surgents. During the first half of the century the 
outbreaks were almost incessant. France lived in 
perpetual alarm. Every capital in Germany was 
in nightly danger of the dagger, the torch, and the 
barricade. Italy was a wretched and distracted 
land of conspiracies and assassinations, suspicious 
princes and iron laws. And in whatever foreign 
country the standard of local revolt might be raised, 
at once the beacon-lights of rebellion seemed to 
flash from the Italian hills. The Spanish insurrec- 
tion in 1820 was the signal for a rising at Naples. 
The French Revolution of 1830 inspired the out- 
break in the Romagna. The weak and uneasy 
states of Italy became a standing menace to all the 
absolute governments of the continent; and Austria 
in particular, mistress of Lornbardy and Venice, 
made it her ungrateful part to keep the whole pe- 
ninsula in subjection. 



The Spirit of the Revolution, 45 



It was Mazzini who first perceived that the secret 
societies, defeated in all their isolated attempts at 
revolution by this stern and formidable power at 
the north, must change their policy, drop the old 
methods of conspiracy for a while, cultivate the 
popular aspirations for independence, and concen- 
trate their energies upon the ejection of the foreign- 
er and the consolidation of all the Italian states. 
The fate of pope and priests, kings and princes, 
could be settled afterwards. It was with this view 
that he organized at Marseilles, in 1831, the Society 
of Young Italy, whose watchword, Union and Inde- 
pendence, captivated at once the generous, the 
ardent, the impulsive, the ambitious, and brought 
to the same work poetry, patriotism, and religion, 
the pistol, the dagger, and the poisoned cup. What 
was to be done with Italy when it was united and 
rid of the Austrians was one of the secrets of the 
initiated never explained to the common people. 
But remarkable illustrations of the inner character 
of the movement were found in 1844 among cer- 
tain papers seized by the police in Rome. " Our 
watchword," wrote one of the leaders, " must be 
Religion, Union, Independence. As for the King 
of Sardinia, we should seek some favorable oppor- 
tunity to poignard him. I recommend the same 
course to be pursued in regard to the King of 
Naples. The Lombards may second our efforts by 
poison, or by insurrection against the Germans, after 
the example of 6 The Sicilian Vespers.' Function- 
aries or private citizens who show a hostile spirit 



46 Life of Pius IX. 



must be put to death. Let them be arrested quietly 
during the night, and the report be circulated that 
they have been exiled or sent to prison, or have 
absconded. ,, The conspirator Ricciardi wrote : 
" Independence can only be acquired by revolution 
and war; we must put aside all considerations 
founded on the progress of knowledge, civilization, 
industry, the increase of wealth, and public prospe- 
rity. . . . The fatal plant, born in Judea, has only 
reached this high point of growth and vigor because 
it was watered with waves of blood. . . . Soon a 
new era will begin for men — the glorious era of a 
redemption quite different from that announced by 
Christ." And Mazzini himself a little later, in an 
address to Young Italy, gave a significant explana- 
tion of his scheme : " In great countries it is by the 
people that we must seek regeneration; in yours it 
is by the princes. Get them on your side. Attack 
their vanity. Let them march at the head^ if they 
will, so long as they march your way. Few will go 
to the end. The essential thing is not to let them 
know the goal of the revolution. They must never 
see more than one step at a time. Profit by the 
least concession to assemble the masses, if it be 
only to testify gratitude. Fetes, songs, assemblies, 
relations established between men of different opin- 
ions, stimulate the growth of ideas, give the people 
a feeling of strength, and make them exacting. 
You must manage the clergy, because the people 
believe in it; already it holds half the doctrine of 
socialism, for, like us, it has the sentiment of fra- 



The Spirit of the Revolution. 47 



ternity, which it calls chanty. Bat its hierarchy 
and habits make it the imp of authority — that is, of 
despotism. We must take what it has of good and 
leave the bad. Try to make equality penetrate the 
Church, and all will go well. Associate! associ- 
ate! associate! Everything is in this one word. 
Secret societies confer an irresistible force on the 
party which can avail itself of them. When a large 
number of associates, receiving the countersign to 
spread a certain idea and to make it public opinion, 
shall be able to concert a movement, they will find 
the old structure riddled in every part and ready 
to fall as if by a miracle at the first breath of pro- 
gress. They will be astonished themselves to see 
kings and princes, the priests and the rich, who 
formed the ancient social edifice, flying before the 
sole power of opinion. Courage, then, and perse- 
verance/' 

In the prosecution of this new scheme of revolu- 
tion the conspirators obtained invaluable help from 
a most unexpected ally. The erring genius of the 
brilliant, learned, but unfortunate priest and philoso- 
pher, Vincenzo Gioberti, did more for them than the 
machinations of the lodges. Carried away by 
visions of a new Italy and a new Catholicism, he 
forgot the divine mission of the Church in specula- 
tions as to what she might accomplish in purely 
secular enterprises. His great error was in think- 
ing of religion as an agent of civilization rather 
than an instrumentality for saving souls, and thus 
he was led into the blunder of attempting to unite 



43 



Life of Pius IX. 



God and the world in an equal partnership. He 
conceived the idea of an Italian federation with the 
King of Sardinia as military head and the Pope as 
spiritual president — a sort of dual empire like that 
of japan, with a tycoon at Turin, a mikado at 
the Vatican. He arnrmed that the clergy had 
failed to recognize the progress of civil and social 
culture, and had therefore lost its influence over the 
human mind. Nations had reached their majori- 
ty and could no longer be held in tutelage. The 
priests must give up a dominion incompatible with 
modern civilization, throw themselves into the front 
of the new social movements, and, hand-in-hand with 
the political agitators, lead Italy to a material glory 
such as no nation on earth had ever seen. His 
book, Del Pimato moi-ale e civile degli Italiani, was 
welcomed with unbounded enthusiasm. The charm 
of a glowing style, the force of an original, culti- 
vated, and poetic mind, the glamour of a philoso- 
phy which seemed to meet all the wants of an 
exciting and uneasy time, turned the heads of the 
(whole nation. Gioberti, Cesare Balbo, Massimo 
d'Azeglio, were the creators of a new literature, and 
Italy read them with flashing eyes and quicken- 
ing pulse. 1 neirs was a reform which seized upon 
the fancy of good and bad alike, and hurried into a 
common delusion the heedless Christian and the 
veteran Carbonaro, the young, the imaginative, the 
adventurous, and the artful. Mazzini, who after- 
wards became one of Gioberti' s bitterest enemies, 
was too shrewd to undervalue this influence. He 



The Spirit of the Revolution. 49 



sought an interview with Gioberti in Paris; he 
offered terms of co-operation ; he even went through 
the form of renouncing what he styled his own 
" more narrow views," and suggested a National 
Association which, adjourning ail questions of forms 
and spirit of government, faith or scepticism, God 
or the devil, should unite Italy in the single purpose 
of creating an Italian nation. Different as the aims 
of the two men were — for Gioberti included even 
the Austrian government of Lombardy and Venice 
in his proposed union — they embraced each other 
for the moment. Together they swept the penin- 
sula. Every city from Palermo to Milan was aflame 
with the new ideas. The soberest patriots lost their 
composure, and some of the clergy began to dream 
wild dreams of political change, and to see visions 
of reformed conspirators kneeling at the feet of a 
democratic pope. We look back upon those days 
from the vantage-ground of experience, and we 
wonder that men should have been so deceived. 
But 1848 had not then given the lie to the profes- 
sions of 1846. Devout Italians at that time did 
not see that the secret societies which assailed the 
Church on one side of the Alps with fire and sword 
could not be sincere in offering to place it in a new 
position of power and glory on the other. 

Such was the moral and political ferment which 
agitated Italy during the last days of Gregory XVI. 
That much-maligned Pope spent the whole fifteen 
years of his reign in violent efforts to keep back the 
threatened explosion. Whether any policy that lay 



Life of Pius IX. 



within his choice would have sufficed to set to 
rights such evil times may be doubted. The policy 
of strict repression, at any rate, did not, and at the 
beginning of the year 1846 a catastrophe appeared 
to be inevitable. Perhaps it was the age and infirmi- 
ties of the Pontiff, after all, that postponed the out- 
break. He was plainly nearing his end; and the 
leaders of Young Italy preferred to wait. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE CONCLAVE. 



N the death of Gregory the whole peninsula 



V^/ was in commotion. For a time it seemed 
impossible that the conclave should meet in peace. 
Rome was in an uproar. The provinces were on 
the verge of revolt. Austrian troops crossed the 
frontier to preserve order. An Austrian fleet ap- 
peared at Ancona. In the diplomatic circle there 
was unusual activity. The character and policy 
of the Pope now to be chosen portended much to 
the secular governments outside of Italy ; most of 
all, it was thought, to Austria and to France. 
Austria wished for a Pope of uncompromising dis- 
position and absolutist tendencies. France earn- 
estly desired a man of liberal and popular opin- 
ions, who sympathized with the aspiration for 
progress and the clamor for administrative re- 
forms. The candidate of the Austrian party was 
Cardinal Lambruschini, Gregory's secretary of 
state. The favorites of the populace were Cardi- 
nal Gizzi and Cardinal Micara, neither of whom, 
however, had more than one or two supporters in 
the Sacred College. The party which, for want of a 
more appropriate term, may be called that of the 




52 



Life of Pius IX. 



moderate liberals placed its hopes in Cardinal 
Mastai-Ferretti, and all the influence of France 
was thrown in his favor. The multitude of Ro- 
mans knew little or nothing about him, for he sel- 
dom went to Rome. But among the cardinals 
his disapproval of some of the political measures 
of the preceding reign was no secret, and his 
amiable and saintly character was certainly under- 
stood. When, therefore, the French ambassador, 
Count Rossi, pressed his name upon the members 
of the Sacred College, the suggestion met with 
much favor. How much effect the representations 
of the ambassador really may have had we can 
only conjecture, but in the election of Pius IX. the 
French Government certainly believed that it had 
gained a diplomatic victory. " All the world con- 
gratulates us," wrote Rossi to M. Guizot as soon 
as the new Pope was proclaimed, ci on a choice 
conformable with our views." 

It was on the 14th of June that the cardinals en- 
tered their cells in the Quirinal, the doors were 
closed, and the guards were posted. The Austri- 
an Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Gaysruck, had 
not yet arrived. It was well known that be was 
charged by the court of Vienna to exercise the 
privilege of veto claimed by the Austrian Govern- 
ment, and it was understood that his instructions 
were to interpose this barrier to the choice of 
either Gizzi or Mastai. The Austrian resident 
minister protested against the opening of the con- 
clave in the Milanese cardinal's absence, but in 



The Conclave. 



53 



vain. The circumstances of the time forbade un- 
necessary delay, and, besides, it seems to have been 
the opinion of the Sacred College that the interfer- 
ence of Austria had perhaps already been carried 
too far. 

At the first meeting of the conclave the name 
of Cardinal Mastai was proposed by Cardinal Al- 
tieri, Prince-Bishop of Albano, and as soon as the 
balloting began it became clear that the contest 
was entirely between him and Cardinal Lambrus- 
chini. There are two processes of voting in ordi- 
nary papal elections. The first is by " scrutiny," 
wherein each cardinal writes the name of his can- 
didate on a ballot, and places it in a chalice on the 
altar of the chapel where the proceedings are held. 
The ballots are then opened and counted by three 
scrutators, chosen by lot among the cardinals, and, 
if no one has received the two-thirds required to 
elect, the conclave passes to the second process. 
In this, which is called Ci accession," any cardinal 
has the privilege of changing his vote, and " ac- 
ceding " to the choice of some one already voted 
for by his colleagues, but he may not introduce a 
new candidate. The balloting takes place twice 
every day. 

In the conclave of 1846 there were fifty-four 
cardinals present, and the number of votes necessa- 
ry to elect was consequently thirty-six. The first 
ballot took place on the morning of the 15th, and 
the suffrages of the college were found to be scat- 
tered among no fewer than twenty- two candidates. 



54 



Life cf Pius IX. 



But only two of these really commanded a party. 
Cardinal Lambruschini had nine votes by the 
scrutiny and six more by accession ; Cardinal 
Mastai had eight by the scrutiny and five by ac- 
cession. Cardinal Gizzi had two. At the even- 
ing session Lambruschini had fallen from fifteen 
to thirteen, and Mastai had risen from thirteen 
to twenty-two. On the morning of the next day 
Lambruschini's vote was eleven; Mastai's was 
twenty-seven. The final result was no longer 
doubtful — provided Cardinal Gaysruck did not ar- 
rive with the veto from Vienna before the evening. 
As it happened, the Austrian representative was 
still far off on the road, and he did not reach Rome 
until the day after the new Pontiff had been pro- 
claimed. 

Cardinal Mastai meanwhile retired to his cell 
and spent the hours in prayer. He came to the 
afternoon session pale and trembling. He was 
one of the three tellers appointed to open the bal- 
lots. When they were taken from the chalice he 
read his own name on the first, on the second, on 
the third — on every paper up to the eighteenth. 
He could not go on; he begged in vain that an- 
other might finish the task. The cardinals gather- 
ed around him, and for some time he sat terrified 
and almost insensible, while tears streamed down 
his cheeks. On the completion of the count it was 
found that he had twenty-seven votes; accession 
gave him nine more; and then the whole assembly 
rose to confirm the choice by unanimous acclama- 



The Conclave. 



55 



tion. It is said that he " prayed and insisted that 
the cardinals should remove that cup from his 
lips ": but they would not annul their decision. 
He fell upon his knees before the altar, and in the 
midst of profound silence communed for a while 
with God. 

Then the junior cardinal-deacon struck a bell. 
The master of ceremonies, the secretary of the 
Sacred College, and the sacristan entered the 
chapel. The cardinal-camerlengo and the three 
cardinal-heads of orders approached the new Pope 
and asked of him, Acceptasne eleciionem dete canonice 
factam in Summum Pontificem ? — " Do you accept 
your canonical election as Supreme Pontiff? n Ashe 
signified assent the canopies erected over the seats of 
the fifty-three remaining cardinals suddenly drop- 
ped, and his alone was left erect. The cardinal-dean 
drew near, and enquired what name he chose to 
assume. He took the name of his first protector, 
Pius VII. Then the master of ceremonies led him 
to the sacristy, where three full suits of pontifical 
vestments, of various sizes, had been prepared in 
advance ; and selecting the set which corresponded 
with his stature, Pius IX. put on the white cassock 
and cap, returned to the altar, gave his first apos- 
tolic benediction, and took his seat on the throne 
to receiyg the homage of the conclave. 

That night he wrote the following letter to his 
brothers at Sinigaglia : 



56 



Life of Pius IX. 



" Rome, June 16, at three-quar- 
ters past ii P.M. 
" Dear Brothers Joseph, Gabriel, and Gaetano : 

" The blessed God, who abases and raises up accord- 
ing to his divine will, has thought fit to lift up my low- 
liness to the most sublime dignity of this world. His 
holy will be always done. I know the awful weight of 
so great a charge, and I know likewise the insufficiency, 
the utter nullity, of my own strength. Have prayers said 
for me, and pray for me yourselves. The conclave 
lasted forty-eight hours. If the municipality should 
think fit to go to any expense in celebrating this event, 
contrive — indeed, it is my will — to have the whole sum 
spent on something profitable to the city, according to 
the directions of the mayor and council. As to your- 
selves, dear brothers, I embrace you with all my heart in 
Jesus Christ ; far from exulting, pity your brother, who 
gives to all of you the apostolic benediction. 

" Pius PP. IX." 

It was on the following morning, June 17, that 
according to custom thebricked-up window in front 
of the Quirinal was opened, and the cardinals came 
out upon the balcony to announce their choice. 
Already it was known throughout the city that an 
election had taken place, for after every unsuccess- 
ful scrutiny the ballots are burned with a little damp 
straw, and the smoke, issuing from a certain chimney, 
informs the crowd watching outside, that no choice 
has been made. At the appointed hour oh the last 
evening there was no smoke, and the populace 
crowded betimes next day to the noble square before 
the palace. " The piazza of the Quirinal," wrote 



The Conclave. 



57 



an English eye-witness,* " presented a magnificent 
coup-cTceiL The sky was most beautiful, the piazza 
crowded with people, the troops drawn up in 
array, and all with their faces turned towards the 
balcony. At nine were heard the blows of ham- 
mers breaking down a window that is ordinarily 
built up. Shortly after the cardinal-camerlengo 
appeared with the bearer of the crucifix, and an- 
nounced to the people the exaltation to the Papacy 
of the cardinal, who took the name of Pius IX. 
The populace responded with shouts of joy." " I 
bring you a message of great joy " — so ran the for- 
mula of declaration : " we have a Pope, the most 
eminent and most reverend Giovanni Maria Mastai- 
Ferretti, who has taken the name of Pius IX." 
Then, while the cannon of the Castle of St. Angelo 
thundered a salute and acclamations rent the air, 
the white-robed figure appeared in the midst of the 
brilliant throng on the balcony, and raised his hand 
in that gesture of benediction which all who ever 
saw him will long associate with his memory. 

* Italy in the Nineteenth Century. By the Rt. Hon. James White- 
side, M.P. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE NEW POPE. 



HE story of his first clays in the pontificate 



X reads like a charming romance. His ac- 
cession was celebrated according to custom by 
profuse benefactions to the poor. Fifty- three 
young girls in Rome and the suburban parishes 
received dowries of fifty-three crowns each.* A 
thousand in the provinces received dowries of ten 
crowns. Six thousand crowns were distributed in 
alms. All articles pawned by the poor in the gov- 
ernment Mont-de-Piete were redeemed; and all 
the debtors confined at the Capitol were released 
at the Pontiff's expense. 

He called the steward of the palace and said to 
him : " When I was bishop I spent for my per- 
sonal expenses a crown a day ; when I was cardi- 
nal I spent a crown and a half; and now that I 
am Pope you must not go beyond two crowns." 
Before his time it was usual in summer to have a 
variety of water-ices and other light refreshments 
always in readiness at the palace, and one day, 
when he asked for a little orangeade, a lackey 
quickly appeared with an array of pastry and ices 




* The Roman crown is about a dollar. 
S3 



The New Pope. 



$9 



of various sorts. Displeased at this wasteful cus- 
tom, of which he had never heard before, the Pope 
sent away the tray, and, calling for a knife and an 
orange, prepared the drink himself. He forbade 
any repetition of the pastry-cook's extravagance. 

His tastes and habits were extremely simple. 
He liked to walk the streets without attendants, 
and to speak with all who had anything to ask of 
him, especially with the poor. He visited the hos- 
pitals, unannounced, to see how they were admin- 
istered and to talk with the patients. He entered 
the schools, and delighted the children by distri- 
buting the prizes at the examinations. Often when 
the little ones were to receive their First Commu- 
nion he appeared without warning in the sanctuary, 
and administered the sacred Host with his own 
hands. Children loved him instinctively, and ap- 
proached him without fear. He was leaving a 
church one day when a boy marched up to him, 
and said : " Are you the Pope ?" 

" Yes, my liitle friend." 

" I have no father." 

" Then I will be a father to you," was the char- 
acteristic rejoinder; and after enquiring into the 
child's history he charged himself with his support 
and education. 

A child wrote to him : " Holy Father, my mo- 
ther is a widow and sick, and I am too young to 
take care of her. If you do not help me I cannot 
buy medicine for her. We must have thirty-three 
pauls ; and I will come to the Quirinal to-morrow 



6o 



Life of Pitts IX. 



to ask you for them." The Pope ordered that he 
should be admitted, and, after some questions, gave 
him a piece of money. 61 That's three pauls too 
much," said the lad, " and I have no change." 
He was told to keep it, and so dismissed. As his 
story proved to be true, the Pope sent for him 
again. 

" You are a brave lad and a good son." said the 
Holy Father, " and I am going to take care of 
you for the future." 

" Oh ! that can't be/" answered the boy, " be- 
cause my mother has nobody but me, and I must 
not leave her." 

" Well, then," said the Pope, " I shall take care 
of your mother too." 

One day he met a little fellow on the road 
outside the walls lugging home a faggot of dry 
sticks which he had gathered in the neighboring 
woods. 

" I hope you have not stolen that, my child," 
said the Pope, " for that would be a sin." 

" Oh ! no, Holy Father." 

"Well, what are you going to do with it?" 

i( I am going to take it home to cook the po- 
lenta." 

" Would you not rather sell it ?" 

" Why not, if you would like to buy ?" 

" Very well, take this money, then." And the 
Pope, giving him a piece of silver, went on his 
way. The boy looked for a moment in surprise at 
the large coin, and then ran after the Pontiff, cry- 



Ihe New Pope. 



61 



ing : " Hi ! Holy Father, where do you want me 
to carry the faggot?" 

A poor market-gardener lost his horse, and walk- 
ed boldly into the palace to ask the Pope if he 
could not spare an old one from the Quirinal sta- 
bles. A secretary found the man on the stairs and 
took his message to the Holy . Father. " Yes," 
was the Pope's reply; " and give him this mo- 
ney, too. He must be very poor, or he would not 
want one of the Quirinal horses." 

One day a soldier on duty at the palace held out 
a loaf of army bread as the Pope passed. Pius 
took it and found it to be bad. 

" Do you always get bread like this ?" he asked. 

" Always, Holy Father." 

" Well, we will look to it." 

The next day the Pope examined the bread 
again, and the day after the military purveyor was 
in prison. 

Disguised in lay costume, he entered a hospital, 
and found a patient dying and the chaplain ab- 
sent. He placed himself by the bed of the sick 
man, heard his confession, and administered the 
last sacraments ; and the chaplain was promptly 
dismissed. In disguise, also, he visited the prisons 
to detect abuses, and the convents to test the 
strictness of the religious observance. One even- 
ing, rather late, a stranger in a cloak knocked at 
the gate of a certain monastery and asked for the 
prior. 

" Is this a time of night," cried the porter through 



62 



Life of Pius IX, 



the grate, " to come knocking at the door of a con- 
vent ? Go away. The prior is in bed and the 
community is asleep. You can come back in the 
morning." 

But the visitor insisted : " Tell the prior that 
Brother Mastai wishes to see him." 

" Brother Mastai 1 And who is Brother Mastai, 
I should like to know ?" k 

Here a dreadful thought came to the porter: 
Mastai was the name of the Pope ; trembling, he 
opened the door and recognized his illustrious 
guest. Pius inspected the convent and ordered the 
community to be assembled. Two of the monks 
were missing ; in violation of the rule they were 
passing the night outside, and the prior explained 
that they allowed themselves this irregularity on 
account of the hot weather. " The rule is for sum- 
mer as well as winter," said the Pope ; and then 
he addressed to the superior a severe reprimand. 
The next day the two truant monks were ordered 
to a house of ecclesiastical correction. 

He set himself at once to correct laxity in reli- 
gious establishments, renew the strictness of conven- 
tual life, and revive the spirit of self-abnegation, 
simplicity, and piety which distinguished the primi- 
tive monastic foundations. He knew that negli- 
gence rather than actual corruption was the great 
danger which monks had to dread, and to keep 
their zeal always fresh he established a new con- 
gregation of cardinals for the supervision of the 
religious orders. He showed a deep and special 



The New Pope. 



63 



concern for the spiritual welfare of all priests charg- 
ed with the care of souls. A few months after his 
election he assembled at the Quirinal the preachers 
appointed for the coming Lent in Rome. " Do 
not forget," said he, " that the secret of your 
strength is in your love ; if you do not love men, 
if your hearts" are not filled with affection and de- 
votion, you will have no influence upon them. 
Watch over your own conduct. Be severe to 
yourselves, and do not let the faithful say of you, 
as subjects under, a despotism say of their rulers, 
" Our masters keep all the rights for themselves and 
leave us nothing but the duties.' " 

Conversing one day with the celebrated preach- 
er, Father Ventura, who had been his classmate 
in boyhood and his close friend in later years, he 
complained bitterly of the prevalence of profan- 
ity among the working classes. " Why do you 
not thunder from the pulpit against this deplorable 
practice ?" 

" Holy Father," replied the preacher, " I have 
done so many a time, but to no avail;" 

" Well, then, I suppose I ought to try my turn," 
said the Pope ; " but it is so long since any pontiff 
has been seen in the pulpit, and I have so little 
eloquence, that I am afraid of offering only a vain 
spectacle of which the people will not profit." 

" Your Holiness is mistaken. The attachment 
of the people to your person is at least a pledge 
that they will listen attentively to your words." 

" So be it. You are to preach on the 13th of 



6 4 



Life of Pius IX. 



January at S. Andrea della Valle ; give up your 
place to me, and keep the secret." 

On the appointed day indescribable was the 
wonder of the immense audience collected to hear 
Father Ventura when they saw the Sovereign Pon- 
tiff ascend the pulpit. It was so many ages since 
a Pope had preached that the innovation creat- 
ed an excitement all over Rome, and, whatever 
the practical effect of the sermon may have been, 
it was certainly listened to with breathless atten- 
tion. 

A Roman noble, displeased with his two sons, 
left all his fortune by will to the priest who should 
say the first Mass in his parish church, on the morn- 
ing of the funeral. The Pope, informed of this un- 
just testament, said the Mass himself, and having 
obtained the fortune, divided it between the right- 
ful heirs. 

One of the Pope's nephews came to Rome after 
the election, expecting to obtain the title of count. 
Pius sent him back to Sinigaglia, and bade 
him warn the family not to look for preferment 
merely because they were related to the Pontiff. 
Another nephew was an officer in the army, and to 
him Pius announced that he must hope for promo- 
tion only as he earned it by merit and length of 
service. 

The modest scale of his private expenditures, and 
the abolition of various abuses and extravagances 
in the administration of the palace, enabled him to 
enlarge his charities, and there was not a corner of 



The New Pope. 



65 



Rome into which his beneficence did not bring 
happiness. Nor was it only by the comparatively 
easy method of reckless almsgiving that he sought 
to relieve distress. He tried to help the poor most 
of all by rinding work for them and stimulating 
commerce and manufactures. He broke up many 
burdensome monopolies. He introduced railways. 
He opened ports of entry. He established iron- 
works. He encouraged the formation of agricul- 
tural societies and the reclaiming of waste lands. 
He founded free lodging-houses for the poor, and 
reading-rooms, and mechanics' clubs, and training- 
schools for artisans. He showed the utmost char- 
ity and tenderness to the oppressed Jews ; set aside 
an annual sum for the relief of their poor ; gave 
money for the repair of their synagogue; allowed 
them to elect a high-priest after they had been 
twelve years without one ; and broke down for 
ever the barrier that confined them to the Ghetto — 
so long the reproach of a tyrannous Christian civ- 
ilization. A terrible inundation of the Tiber, by 
which the Jews were the greatest sufferers, happen- 
ed in the first year of his pontificate. " This disas- 
trous calamity," says the Protestant Mr. Legge, 
" only supplied the Pope with an opportunity for 
displaying afresh his Christian benevolence and his 
generous devotion to the temporal as well as spiri- 
tual well-being of his people. Ungrudgingly, and 
with splendid munificence, he contributed to aid 
the unhappy victims of this disaster, forestalling the 
demand for redress and the commotion with which 



66 



Life of Pins IX. 



in all probability it would have been attended." 
When Pius IX. was proclaimed from the balcony 
of the Quirinal, the populace, ignorant of this Car- 
dinal Mastai-Ferretti, and disappointed, perhaps, in 
a hope of the election of Gizzi, looked at him with 
some doubt. But long before the end of the year 
they had conceived for him a true, deep, enthusi- 
astic affection which no political changes and ex- 
citements in after-time could ever wholly remove 
from their hearts. 

While the personal character of the new Pontiff 
captivated the Roman multitude, the earliest in- 
dications of his public policy filled Italy with en- 
thusiasm. One of his first acts was to declare an 
amnesty for all political offences, and a charac- 
teristic anecdote is told of him in connection with 
it. He called a council of his principal advisers, 
and asked their votes upon the proposed measure 
of mercy. To his chagrin, a majority of the balls 
voted were black. He took off his white cap and 
placed it over them. " Now," said he, " they are 
all white." The prisons were opened. The exiles 
returned. One thousand six hundred persons were 
restored to freedom and friends. The concession 
of an amnesty, under restrictions, was a common 
enough act of a new papal government, but never 
before had a pardon been granted so sweeping and 
so complete. None were excepted from its provi- 
sions, save a very few " ecclesiastics, military offi- 
cers, and civil servants " whose cases were reserved 
for especial examination; and no conditions were 



The New Pope. 



6 7 



imposed upon the pardoned, except that they 
should promise in writing " never to abuse this 
favor," and " to fulfil all the duties of good sub- 
jects." Rome was in a tumult of joy. Veteran 
conspirators threw themselves at the Pope's feet. 
Some of those who were afterwards the most ac- 
tive in the overthrow of his government were the 
first to pledge their eternal fidelity. The populace 
thronged about him whenever he went abroad, 
cast flowers in his path, waited for hours before 
the palace windows to get his blessing. On the 
feast of St. Peter's Chains a great number of the 
pardoned received communion from the Holy Fa- 
ther's hands. The demonstrations of rejoicing 
reached an unheard-of extravagance. It was al- 
most a continual holiday in Rome, with gay pro- 
cessions by day and torchlight parades by night, 
public banquets in the vineyards and gardens, 
triumphal arches spanning the streets, the papal 
colors — white and yellow — fluttering from every 
window and decorating every breast. 

The work of administrative reform was pushed 
with the utmost activity, and the Pope gave his 
personal care to the details of almost every de- 
partment of the government. He improved the 
finances, reduced the taxes, abolished sinecures, 
cut down the expenditures, reorganized the courts 
of law. The French ambassador, Count Rossi, 
writing to M. Guizot, gave an interesting account 
of an unofficial conversation with the Pope re- 
specting the correction of abuses. " This is what 



68 



Life of Pius IX. 



I can and ought to do," said Pius, after explaining 
his plans. " A Pope has no business to plunge 
into Utopian schemes. Would you believe it ? 
there are people who speak of an Italian league 
with the Pope at its head. As if such a thing were 
possible ! Those are chimeras." 

" Besides/' replied the count, " your Holiness 
has other matters with which to occupy yourself. 
You have traced the route you have to follow, and 
better results will ensue ; the end of abuses, which 
I fear are numerous, and the introduction of regu- 
larity and order — such, I think, is the wish of your 
Holiness." 

" You are right," said the Pope ; " such is my 
purpose. I must, in the first place, re-establish 
our finances; but I require a little time." 

" No one," answered Rossi, " expects from your 
Holiness precipitate measures ; the essential point 
is to let it be known that they are in active opera- 
tion. The confidence of the public is entirely at- 
tained; they will wait with gratitude and respect." 

The organization of the new government was a 
matter of some difficulty. All the cardinals per- 
ceived the necessity of reform, but there were great 
differences of opinion as to the particular measures 
which could be safely adopted. The Pope was 
hard pressed likewise by exterior forces — by Austria 
on the one hand, and the intrigues of Piedmont, 
the plots of the Mazzinians, and the precipitation 
of the Roman people on the other. His own reso- 
lution, however, was taken promptly, and he held to 



The New Pope. 



6g 



it without wavering. For the first few weeks of his 
reign he called to his aid in the administration a 
temporary commission of six cardinals, among whom 
were the foremost representatives of both parties — • 
the popular Gizzi and the unpopular Lambruschini 
— but in August Cardinal Gizzi was appointed 
Secretary of State, and the enthusiasm of the 
populace rose higher and higher. The cere- 
mony of taking possession of the church of St. 
John Lateran, on the 8th of November, called out 
extraordinary demonstrations of rejoicing. " The 
spectacle is most imposing," writes an English 
observer ; " but on this occasion the shouts of 
thousands of grateful people gave a life to the 
ceremony without which it had been cold, and of 
the vast multitude assembled every individual ex- 
hibited the joy of his heart. The Pope raised him- 
self and stood upright for some minutes, the triple 
crown on his head; this was the signal for fresh 
acclamations. He gave the blessing, waving his 
hand in the form of a cross. A burst of enthusi- 
asm followed; the cannon thundered, the music 
sounded, drums, trumpets, and pealing of bells 
joined with the people in one mighty chorus, and 
the pageant was over." Yet how little the Pope 
was affected by the intoxication of flattery and the 
shouts of the multitude, and how well he under- 
stood the hidden forces which were even then un- 
dermining his throne, appeared in his first encyclical 
letter, published the day after this splendid celebra- 
tion. He censured, in severe terms, the secret 



Life of Pius IX. 



societies, " which emerge from their native darkness 
for the ruin and desolation of the community"; the 
u guilty fellowship u of men " who drag to light the 
most monstrous shapes of error"; " the haters of 
truth, the skilful artificers of fraud, who labor to ex- 
tinguish in men's minds every impulse of piety, jus- 
tice, and honor, to corrupt morals, to confound all 
ideas of divine and human right, and to overturn 
the foundations of the Catholic religion and of civil 
society. " He condemned the opinion that " the 
progress and development which mark the course 
of human affairs can prevail also in the Catholic 
religion, the perfect work of God, not to be im- 
proved by the genius of man." He denounced the 
dangerous tendencies of the " Bible societies, which 
obtrude upon all kinds of people copies of the Sa- 
cred Scriptures translated into living languages, and 
accompanied frequently with perverse and erroneous 
interpretations, to the end that every man, setting 
aside the authority of the Church, may interpret the 
revealed word of Almighty God in conformity with 
his private judgment." Thus, at the very beginning 
of his reign, the Sovereign Pontiff defined, with 
clear and positive voice, the same irreconcilable 
hostility of Catholic teaching to the fallacies of 
modern liberalism which he stated a quarter of a 
century later in a still more celebrated encyclical. 

Naturally, the letter of November, 1846, made 
a profound impression throughout Europe, and 
caused no little irritation among Protestants, who 
had cherished wild and absurd ideas of the " re- 



The New Pope. 



71 



forming Pope " ; but whatever momentary disap- 
pointment may have followed this invigorating de- 
claration of the papal authority was soon effaced 
by the effect of his political policy. The censorship 
of the press was relaxed. The governors of pro- 
vinces were instructed to call together the most in- 
fluential laymen within their jurisdiction, and con- 
sider with them the reforms most urgently needed. 
A Consulta of State was organized, composed of lay 
deputies from the provinces, who were to assemble 
in Rome " to assist the Pope in the administration, 
and to give their opinion on matters of government 
connected with the general interests of the state and 
those of the provinces, on the preparation, amend- 
ment, and execution of the laws, on the creation 
and redemption of public debts, on the imposition 
or reduction of taxes, on the tariff and the budget, 
on the revision and reform of the organization of 
local councils, etc." A council of ministers was 
formed at the same time, with Cardinal Gizzi at the 
head, and Antonelli, who enjoyed great popularity 
at that time, in charge of the portfolio of finance. 
A little later a municipal government was granted 
to the city of Rome, with a council of one hundred 
members, and an upper chamber composed of a 
" senator " and eight " conservators " chosen by the 
council from its own members. Negotiations were 
opened with other Italian states for the establish- 
ment of a customs union, intended to be the basis 
of a still more intimate confederation. The most 
important of the new measures, however, was the 



72 



Life of Pius IX. 



formation in Rome of a Civic Guard, or volunteer 
militia, which, of all popular institutions, is the most 
thoroughly incompatible with an absolute personal 
government. The public rejoicings at this manifes- 
tation of the Pope's confidence in his people would 
be thought extravagant, if we did not know the sen- 
timent which lay behind the noisy demonstrations 
of gratitude. The young men who hastened to 
don a showy uniform and devote themselves to 
exercises of arms were not merely enamored of 
military life and proud of their unaccustomed 
honors and responsibilities, but they were burning 
with the warlike fever which was soon to precipi- 
tate the revolution; and to many of them the en- 
rolment of the Civic Guard meant only a long step 
towards the expulsion of the Austrians. 

Meanwhile, this steady, careful, and voluntary 
progress of the Pope towards constitutional forms 
was watched by the world with diverse feelings. 
The animosity of Austria was not concealed. Sev- 
eral of the Italian states united in a note to the 
Austrian Government, calling attention to what 
they called the dangerous policy of the Pope, and 
Austria not only remonstrated with the Roman 
court, but plotted incessantly to defeat the Holy 
Father's benevolent purposes. France, on the con- 
trary, gave Pius a frank and generous support. 
Louis Philippe sent the Prince de Joinville to 
Rome with a message of compliment and congra- 
tulation, and the ministry, led by M. Guizot, vied 
with the opposition, led by M. Thiers, in resolu- 



The New Pope. 



73 



tions and speeches of encouragement. Eulogies 
were pronounced in the British House of Com- 
mons. It was proposed to appoint an English am- 
bassador to the Quirinal, and the scheme was only 
abandoned in consequence of the unwillingness of 
the British Government to receive an ecclesiastic as 
the Pope's representative at St. James's. In New 
York a great public meeting of Protestants was 
held at the Broadway Tabernacle, in November, 
1847, to P res ent the "hearty and respectful saluta- 
tions " of the American people to the Sovereign 
Pontiff " for the noble part he had taken in behalf 
of his subjects." The address on this occasion was 
written by Horace Greeley, and among the distin- 
guished men who wrote to express their sympathy 
with the demonstration were ex- President Van Bu- 
ren, Vice-President Dallas, Mr. Buchanan, who 
was then Secretary of State, and Edward Everett, 
who was then president of Harvard College. Even 
Mazzini, true to the policy already explained, wrote 
to the Pope in September, 1847: "Holy Father, 
I watch your progress with immense hopes. Be 
confident, trust in. us, and we will found for you a 
government unique in Europe. We know how to 
convert into an active force the instinct with which 
Italy is now quivering from end to end ; we can 
raise up support for you in the midst of all the 
peoples of Europe, and find friends for you even in 
the ranks of the Austrians. We alone can do this, 
because we are united in our aim and have faith in 
the truth of our principle. I write to you because I 



74 



Life of Pius IX. 



believe you worthy to initiate this grand enterprise." 
M. Guizot addressed a note to the French repre- 
sentatives at the European courts, announcing the 
desire of France that in all countries the necessary 
reforms should be accomplished regularly, progres- 
sively, and by consent between the governments 
and peoples, and pointing to Pius IX. as an ex- 
ample of a wise and patriotic ruler. " The Pope," 
said he, " in the great work of reform he has under- 
taken, displays a deep sense of his dignity as Head 
of the Catholic Church and of his rights as a sove- 
reign, and shows himself equally determined to 
maintain them within and without his states." 



CHAPTER VII. 



CONSPIRACY. 

THUS cheered and honored at home and 
abroad, by friends and by enemies, the Pa- 
pacy shone with a glory such as it had not dis- 
played since Leo X. But under the outward show 
of peace the Pontiff well knew that conspiracy was 
active. Many careful foreign observers reported, 
even when the songs of triumph were loudest in 
the streets of Rome, and when the multitudes came 
by torchlight to kneel in the piazza in front of the 
Quirinal and ask for the Pope's blessing before 
they went to bed, that these transports were not 
entirely sincere. After the proclamation of amnes- 
ty and the relaxation of police surveillance thou- 
sands of the revolutionists poured into Rome and 
made that city the nursery of plots. The instruc- 
tions of Mazzini were carefully obeyed : " Profit 
by the least concession to assemble the masses, if 
only to testify gratitude. Festivals, songs, assem- 
blies give the people a feeling of strength and 
make them exacting. A king grants a more libe- 
ral law; applaud it, and demand that which must 
logically follow. Associate, associate ! Every- 
thing is in that one word." So while on the one 

75 



7 6 



Life of Pins IX. 



hand the gratitude of the people was never allowed 
to flag, on the other they were never allowed to 
feel that their demands had been satisfied. Every 
concession inflamed the popular uneasiness. Every 
demonstration in honor of the Holy Father covered 
a revolt in disguise. " We must make him our 
political bceuf gras" said Mazzini. At festivals theJ 
agents of Young Italy and of the secret societies 
mingled with the crowd, and added seditious cries 
to the genuine acclamations of the people. When 
the Pope walked abroad they followed him, to in- 
terrupt the cheers for the Pontiff with demonstra- 
tions against his government. Less than two 
months after his accession, as he drove under an 
arch erected in his honor, the mob stopped some 
of the prelates of his suite, and refused to let them 
pass beneath the triumphal emblems. The shouts 
of " Viva Pio Nono ! " soon changed to cc Viva Pio 
Nono solo!" and with them were heard " Down 
with the Jesuits ! " and " Death to the retrogra- 
ders ! " Every gathering of the people — a scientific 
congress at Genoa, a patriotic anniversary, a work- 
ing-men's debating club, a picnic, a parade — be- 
came an occasion of political agitation. In the 
taverns where Angelo Brunetti, nicknamed Ciceru- 
acchio, or " Little Cicero," fascinated the common 
people by his good-fellowship and his fluent tongue; 
in the cafes ; in the Circolo Romano and the Cir- 
colo Popolare; in the parlors of Lord Palmer- 
ston's special envoy, Lord Minto, where gathered 
a strange company of advanced Liberals — Charles 



Conspiracy. 



77 



Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, the radical of rank ; 
Ciceruacchio, the leader of the rabble; Sterbini, 
the poet, physician, and journalist; and Galletti, 
the pardoned exile, who had just sworn to shed 
his blood for the Pope if the Pope would have it — 
the complaint was nightly heard that Pius was too 
slow : that there were too many " reactionists " 
around him ; that there ought to be more laymen 
in the administration and more power for the Con- 
sul ta of State. And gradually out of all this agita- 
tion a demand for the destruction of the existing 
Italian governments was shaping itself into expres- 
sion. In April, 1847, a festival was held ostensibly 
to celebrate the anniversary of the foundation of 
Rome, and there was a great meeting at the Baths 
of Titus, where Massimo d'Azeglio made an ad- 
dress, and referred amid thunders of applause to 
u the expulsion of the Goths, Huns, and other Van- 
dals " from Italy — an allusion which, of course, 
there was no mistaking. 

In the summer of 1847 great preparations were 
made for the first anniversary of the proclamation 
of amnesty. Suddenly Rome was thrown into wild 
confusion by the rumor of a reactionist conspiracy. 
It was gravely alleged that Cardinal Lambruschini, 
the Austrian Government, and the general of the 
Jesuits had concerted a plot to seize the Pope and 
carry him off. The proposed celebration was for- 
bidden. The people flew to arms. Lists of cardi- 
nals and others accused of complicity in the nefa- 
rious scheme were posted all over the city, with the 



78 



Life of Pius IX. 



inscription, " All devoted to the eternal execration 
of the people." The suspected cardinals fled. For 
two days and nights the police was helpless, and 
Rome was entirely in the hands of Ciceruacchio. 
It was this democratic tribune who mounted the 
steps of the Pope's carriage one day with a tricolor 
flag inscribed, " Holy Father, rely upon the people," 
while the people rent the air with execrations of the 
Jesuits, the ministry, and the police. 

Mr. Legge describes an impressive scene at the 
Quirinal when a multitude, half loyal, half sedi- 
tious, came to cheer the Pope for some popular act. 
" The Pontiff showed himself at the balcony, and 
intimated his wish to address the crowd. The si- 
lence was profound, and he spoke as follows : 

" 6 Before the benediction of God descends upon 
you, on the rest of my people, and, I say it again, 
on all Italy, I pray you to be of one mind and to 
keep the faith you have sworn to me, the Pontiff. ' 

" At these words the silence of deep feeling was 
broken by a sudden thunder of acclamation, 6 Yes, 
I swear,' and Pius IX. proceeded : 

" 6 I warn you, however, of the raising of certain 
cries that are not of the people but of a few indivi- 
duals, and against making any such requests to me 
as are incompatible with the sanctity of the Church ; 
for these I cannot, I may not, and I will not grant. 
This being understood, with my whole soul I bless 
you.' " 

Farini quotes a secret letter from the French Pre- 
fect of Police to the Minister of the Interior, dated 



Conspiracy. 



79 



in January, 1848 : " I am told that Mazzini is come 
to Paris, in order to take counsel with such of his 
friends as are here about the means of raising mo- 
ney to despatch emissaries into Tuscany and Pied- 
mont and to Rome and Naples, who will have in- 
structions to second the existing movement and to 
ingratiate themselves with the patriots. They have 
been recommended to study the character of Cice- 
ruacchio, the popular leader in Rome, and to exert 
themselves to draw him into their faction by induc- 
ing him to believe that everything will be done 
with a view to the greater glory of Pius IX. In a 
word, the plan of Mazzini is as follows : to avail 
himself of the present excitement, turning it to ac- 
count on behalf of Young Italy, which repudiates 
monarchy, under whatsoever form, and to effect this 
by raising the cry of ' Viva ! ' for the Duke of Tus- 
cany, for Charles Albert, and for Pius IX." 

A letter of Mazzini's, written in 1847, had taught 
Young Italy that their best policy was to inflame 
the popular hatred of Austria, then provoke Austria 
to attack them, and in the heat of war accomplish 
the rest. The plan nearly succeeded. Alarmed at 
the aspect of affairs in Central Italy in the summer 
of 1847, Austria marched a body of troops into the 
papal territory. The treaty of 181 5 gave her the 
right to place a garrison in the citadel of Ferrara. 
She claimed a further privilege and took military 
possession of the whole town. Against this usurpa- 
tion the Sovereign Pontiff protested in the most en- 
ergetic terms, and after a diplomatic contest of sev- 



8o 



Life of Pius IX. 



eral months' duration the Austrians were forced to 
retire. But the occasion which the secret societies 
desired had been given. A cry for war and inde- 
pendence resounded from the Gulf of Genoa to the 
Bay of Naples. Loud clamors were raised in 
Rome for the reorganization and strengthening of 
the army. An imperative demand was made in the 
form of a somewhat threatening address to the Con 
suita of State for the immediate calling out of the 
Civic Guard in every part of the country. And it 
became evident that the Civic Guard could not be 
trusted to obey the Pope's orders. 

While the conspiracy was thus hurrying to a 
crisis it was remarkable that the devotion of an im- 
mense majority of the people to the person of the 
Sovereign Pontiff remained unimpaired. If sedi- 
tious cries interrupted the shouts of applause, it 
must nevertheless be admitted that they did not 
mix well, and that the rebellious demonstrations 
were more or less forced and theatrical. When the 
tendency of the popular meetings became apparent 
the Pope took pains to discourage festivities pro- 
posed in his honor, and at the slightest intimation 
of his wish they were cheerfully abandoned. Even 
the cry for independence — stimulated alike by the 
insolence of Austria and the enthusiasm of Gio- 
berti — though it was loud and wide-spread, was by 
no means general. Count Rossi was an Italian, an 
earnest Liberal, and a shrewd observer, and he was 
using his great influence to hasten the Pope's re- 
forms and to extend their scope ; but, although his 



Conspiracy, 



sympathies were all with the party of unity, he 
looked upon an Italian " people " in 1847 as little 
more than a phantom of the imagination. il It is a 
war of independence which you would invoke," 
said he. "Beit so; let us calculate your forces. 
You have 60,000 regular troops in Piedmont, and 
not a man more. You speak of the enthusiasm of 
the Italian populations ; I know them. Traverse 
them from end to end ; see if a heart beats, if a 
man moves, if an arm is raised to commence the 
fight. The Piedmontese once beaten, the Austrians 
may go from Reggio to Calabria without meeting 
a single Italian." 

I know of nothing finer in the history of revolu- 
tions than the attitude of Pius IX. in these days 
of excitement and danger. Generous, affectionate, 
and patriotic, neither threats, nor remonstrances, 
nor ingratitude, nor personal peril could turn him 
from the course which he believed to be best for his 
subjects and best for Italy. The French Govern- 
ment informed him privately that it had placed 
5.000 troops at his disposal to secure the tranquillity 
of the Pontifical States, and they were ready to em- 
bark whenever he should give the word. But he 
would not have them. He had trusted himself to 
his people, and he would trust them to the end. 
He granted the demand for a reorganization of the 
army. He appointed the Piedmontese General 
Dnrando to the chief command. By a special pro- 
clamation he committed the defence of his person 
and of the Sacred College, the protection of life 



82 



Life of Pius IX. 



and property, and the preservation of order to the 
Civic Guard. By a new motu p?-oprio he made the 
Council of Ministers more popular. The cabinet 
underwent many changes. Gizzi was succeeded by 
the Pope's relative, Cardinal Ferretti; Ferretti gave 
place to Cardinal Bofondi ; Bofondi was followed 
by Cardinal Anton elli; and every change was re- 
garded as an advance towards constitutionalism. 
Laymen were appointed to the highest offices in the 
administration, all the ministerial posts being 
thrown open to them except the Secretaryship of 
State, which is quite as much concerned with eccle- 
siastical as with secular affairs. The Antonelli 
cabinet included Galletti, Minghetti, Farini, and 
Prince Aldobrandini, all laymen and all leaders in 
the popular party. A layman of the popular party 
was also placed at the head of the police. But 
when the rights of the Church, the principles of 
jus* ice, the sanctity of laws were attacked, the 
Pope was as firm as adamant and as fearless as a 
lion. 

When the Consulta of State came together with 
great pomp and rejoicing in the midst of a general 
excitement, he said frankly in his address at the 
opening of the session : " He would be gravely 
mistaken who should see in this Council I have 
created the realization of his own Utopias, or the 
germ of an institution incompatible with the pon- 
tifical sovereignty." Still earlier, in what may be 
called the noontide of his popularity, he announced 
by proclamation that he should pursue the course 



Conspiracy. 



83 



of political reform only " so far as was consistent 
with the temporal sovereignty and that indepen- 
dence in the exercise of the primacy for which God 
willed that the Holy See should have a temporal 
principality." And when he published the Ct funda- 
mental statute " in 1848 he said plainly that this 
was the limit of his concessions : " I have done ail 
I can. I shall do no more." Those who professed 
to be shocked by the claims of the encyclical and 
Syllabus of 1864 strangely forgot that Pius IX. 
preached the same politics as long ago as 1846, 
and never preached any other. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



REVOLUTION. 

WE know only imperfectly the hidden springs 
of action of that year of revolutions, 
1848; but suddenly, as if by concert, the insurrec- 
tion flashed up almost simultaneously all over the 
Continent. Naples was in revolt. Venice rose 
under the inspiration of the patriot Manin. The 
Milanese flew to arms. Louis Philippe fled for his 
life. The Republic was proclaimed at Paris. 
There were barricades at Berlin. There was fight- 
ing at Vienna. The Italian cities were intensely 
agitated, and Rome was the most feverish of all. 
The municipality waited on the Pope and demanded 
a constitution after the example of Naples and Tus- 
cany. But already the Holy Father had deter- 
mined to grant one, and a commission had been 
for some time engaged in its preparation. The 
constitution, or staluto fondame?itale, was promul- 
gated on the 14th of March* 1848. It provided 
for a Senate, composed of the College of Cardi- 
nals, and a legislative body consisting of a High 
Council nominated by the Pope, and a House of 
Deputies elected by the people. The ratio of rep- 

84 



Rtvolution. 



85 



reservation was to be one to 30,000. The elective 
franchise was based on taxation. The imposition 
of taxes and the voting of the budget, with the ex- 
ception of an annual allowance of 600,000 crowns 
for the maintenance of the Pontiff and the papal 
court, the diplomatic service, etc., was left to the 
Deputies. Even in publishing this constitution, 
however, Pius declared that the pontifical authority 
over matters essentially belonging to the Catholic 
reiis;ion and its rule of morals would not be surren- 
dered; and, moreover, the Deputies were forbid- 
den to interfere with ecclesiastical or mixed affairs. 
All laws required the sanction of the Pope, which 
was to be given or withheld in secret consistory. 

The " party of action " soon began to deride this 
constitution as a delusion, but most of the people 
received it at first with delight ; and in the exube- 
rance of their joy the Mazzinians made a fresh 
attack upon the Jesuits and mobbed the Gesu. It 
was perhaps the highest possible honor to the il- 
lustrious Society of Jesus that the extreme radicals 
always pursued them with relentless animosity. 
The Pope tried in vain to protect them. It became 
evident that their continued presence in Rome 
would be a constant cause of disorder; and, unwill- 
ing to be the occasion of bloodshed, they closed 
their establishment, some of the fathers taking 
flight, others finding shelter in private houses. 

Meanwhile, Young Italy found a leader in the 
King of Sardinia, and the war of independence 



36 



Life of Pius IX. 



broke out amid the acclamations of the peninsula. 
No sooner had the insurrection declared itself at 
Milan and Venice than Charles Albert, with a well- 
appointed army, crossed the Piedmontese frontier 
to co-operate with the patriots in the expulsion of 
the Austrians. Volunteers from all the Italian 
States hurried into Lombardy. The people threw 
themselves into the movement without waiting for 
their governments. The Pope was urged to declare 
war against the German intruder. He refused. 
The common father of the faithful must be at peace 
with all the world. But to defend his frontier he 
sent Gen. Durando, with 17,000 men, to guard the 
line of the Po, strictly commanding him not to 
cross the boundary. The course of the Pope at 
this juncture has been the subject of unreasonable 
criticism. He has been accused by one party of 
weakness in yielding too much, by another of vacil- 
lation in retracting his first concessions. Both are 
wrong. His policy was clear and consistent from 
the first. There is no doubt that he was always 
an ardent friend of Italian independence ; but he 
wished to obtain it peaceably, remembering, above 
all, that the bark of Peter is not a man-of-war. 
His sympathies could not tempt him from his duty. 
In the latter part of his life, recalling some of the 
events of this period, he related a conversation 
with one of the radical ministers who waited on 
him at the Ouirinal to urge a declaration of war : 
e< He was a republican, who played the part of a 
tribune of the people, but he came into my cabinet 



Revolution. 



8 7 



timid and cringing, and said in a low voice that 
disturbances had been occasioned by one of my 
allocutions, in which I notified to all the powers 
my refusal to join in the war against Austria. To 
which I replied, ' The Vicar of Christ ought to be 
at peace with all.' 

" ' But, Holy Father/ replied this man, ' you ex- 
pose yourself to great misfortunes. ' 

" 6 1 will bear them. Whatever they may be, I 
will do nothing contrary to honor, contrary to 
justice, contrary to conscience, contrary to reli- 
gion.' " 

While he totally rejected the Mazzinian concep- 
tion of a unitary Italian republic, he was, neverthe- 
less, a warm partisan of Italian unity, as well as of 
Italian independence. W e have seen that, in con- 
versation with Count Rossi in 1846, he pronounced 
the plan of a confederation then talked about as 
chimerical. But he himself was the foremost sup- 
porter of another scheme of union, based upon a 
league of constitutional states, and somewhat re- 
sembling in certain features the ideal of Gioberti. 
He proposed that a diet of deputies from the 
Italian powers should assemble at Rome, primarily 
to arrange a customs union, but with the further 
view of a closer and a more general association of 
interests. Several of the States gave their assent, 
and Pius despatched Monsignor Corboli Bussi to 
procure the adhesion of Charles Albert. But the 
project was defeated by the ambition of Piedmont, 
which aimed at a union under the crown of Savoy, 



88 



Life of Pius IX. 



and the intrigues of the Mazzinians and Carbonari, 
who only desired a democracy. 

The movement of a defensive army to the fron- 
tier was merely an ordinary and proper measure of 
precaution, but it suited the purpose of the clubs to 
acclaim it as an act of war. A great public meet- 
ing was held in the Colosseum to ratify the new 
" crusade/' and there the Barnabite monk Gavazzi, 
masquerading in the character of a new Peter the 
Hermit, and brandishing a tricolored cross, roused 
the fanaticism of the multitude with his fiery speech, 
and conjured them to swear by the symbol of their 
faith to march against the "barbarians," and re- 
turn no more until the last of the hated race had 
been chased out of Italy. A clamorous mob 
rushed to the Quirinal, and insisted that the Pope 
should bless their banners. Five of the people 
were admitted. " My sons," said the Pontiff, " do 
you know where you are going ? " 

"Where our chiefs lead us, Holy Father." 

" That is very well ; but perhaps it is better that 
you should learn your destination from me. Know, 
then, that you are only to defend the frontiers of 
our States. Take care not to cross them ; for in 
doing so you will not only violate my orders but 
lay upon the pontifical troops the responsibility of 
an act of aggression which they must in no case 
assume. Go, then, but no further than the fron- 
tier." And blessing the papal standard which one 
of them held in his hands, he thus dismissed them. 

The language of this address was highly distaste- 



Revolution. 



8 9 



fu] to the popular leaders. It was not repeated to 
the crowd. Only a report was spread abroad that 
the Holy Father had blessed the expedition ; and 
so the army began its march. There were 7,000 
regular troops and 10,000 motley volunteers — the 
flower of the nobility and the dregs of the wine- 
shop; the most gallant youth of Rome and the 
scum of all the political clubs of the Continent. 
They hurried through the Romagna, gutting taverns 
and hunting Jesuits by the way ; one day exchang- 
ing cheers and embraces with the people of the 
towns through which they passed, the next day 
committing excesses which covered their cause with 
dishonor and turned the public sentiment against 
them. Our volunteer bands, says Emilio Dan- 
dolo, were " composed of wrangling disputants, of 
lawyers, of popular tribunes with innumerable 
shades of political opinions, with inconsiderate 
hopes, instability ot ideas, and proneness to sus- 
picion. " At their head marched Gavazzi, with the 
title of chaplain-general. On reaching Bologna 
Gen. Durando published, April 5, an extraordinary 
order of the day, declaring that the Austrians made 
war upon the Lord* and that the soldiers of the 
Pope, going into battle under the emblem of the 
cross, would conquer with the sacred cry, " God 
wills it! ,? Then he formally placed his army at 
the disposal of the Sardinian king. It was after- 
wards discovered that this flagrant disobedience of 
the Pope's commands was in accordance with 
secret instructions from Aldobrandini, the papal 



90 



Life of Pius IX. 



Minister of War ! It was impossible for the Holy 
Father to remain silent under such an outrage. 
He repudiated Durando's order of the day in the 
official press, and he spoke more fully in the allo- 
cution of April 29 : 

" Seeing that some desire that we, too, along with the 
ether princes of Italy and their subjects, should engage 
in war against the Austrians, we have thought it conve- 
nient to proclaim clearly and openly in this our solemn 
assembly that such a measure is altogether alien from our 
counsels, inasmuch as we, albeit unworthy, are the vice- 
gerent upon earth of Him who is the author of peace and 
the lover of charity \ and, conformably to the function of 
our supreme apostolale, we embrace all kindreds, peo- 
ples, and nations with equal solicitude of paternal love. 
But if, notwithstanding, there are not wanting among 
our subjects those who allow themselves to be carried 
away by the example of the rest of the Italians, in what 
manner can we possibly curb their ardor? 

"And in this place we cannot refrain from repudiating, 
before the face of all nations, the treacherous advice, 
published in journals and in various works, of those 
who would have the Roman Pontiff to be the head and 
president of some sort of novel republic of the whole 
Italian people. ... In grievous error are those in- 
volved who imagine that our mind can be seduced by the 
alluring grandeur of a more extended temporal sway to 
plunge the country into the midst of war and its tu- 
mults." 

This declaration came none too soon. For some 
time the radical faction in the ministry had been 
in the habit ol counterfeiting the sovereign's assent 
to measures of which he disapproved. If the 
army was to make war against his will his reign 



Revolution. 



was at an end. The allocution was followed at 
Rome by a general explosion of wrath. The cry 
of " Treason ! " rang through the streets. Sterbini 
and Ciceruacchio harangued the clubs. The more 
violent proposed to kill the priests. The mob at- 
tacked the post-office with the purpose of seizing 
the letters and searching them for evidence of 
treachery. The Civic Guards flew to arms, frater- 
nized with the people, defied the Pope's orders,, and 
posted soldiers at the doors of the cardinals. A 
proclamation of the Holy Father's, counselling 
peace, was torn down with every mark of insult. 
The ministry resigned, and, after some days' delay, 
was replaced by a more radical cabinet, at the 
head of which was Count Mamiani, one of the 
exiles of 1831, who had returned to Rome after the 
amnesty proclaimed by Pius, but had always re- 
fused to sign the promise of loyalty demanded of 
those who accepted this act of grace. Galletti re- 
mained in the new administration as Minister of 
Police. As a matter of course, Mamiani insisted 
upon a declaration of war against Austria: but 
upon this point he found the Pontiff immovable. 
On the 3d of May Pius addressed the following 
autograph letter to the Emperor of Austria: 

" Your Majesty : 

" It has always been customary that words of peace 
should go forth from this Holy See amidst the wars that 
have bathed Christendom in blood ; and hence, in the 
allocution of April 29, while we declared that our pater- 
nal heart shrank from declaring war, we expressed in 



9 2 



Life of Pins IX. 



the strongest manner our ardent desire to contribute 
towards peace. Let it not, then, be distasteful to 
your majesty that we now appeal to }~our filial and reli- 
gious sentiments, and with the affection of a father ex- 
hort you to withdraw from a contest which can never 
subdue to your empire the hearts of the Lombards and 
Venetians, but must entail the dread series of calamities 
that attend on war, and from which your majesty's soul 
must recoil. 

" Nor must the generous German nation take it ill if 
we urge them to lay aside resentment, and exchange for 
friendly relations of neighborly intercourse a domination 
which could never be useful or honorable while sus- 
tained only by the sword. 

" Let not your nation, therefore, justly proud of its own 
nationality, imagine that honor impels it to a bloody con- 
test with the Italian nation ; but rather let it generously 
acknowledge Italy as a sister, even as both are daughters 
to us and dear to our heart ; so that each may confine 
herself to her natural limits, upon honorable terms and 
with God's bles.-irg. 

" In the meantime we pray the Giver of all Light and 
the Author of all Good to inspire your majesty with holy 
counsel, and from our inmost heart we extend to y< u, to 
her majesty the empress, and to the imperial family the 
aposioiic benediction." 

To press upon the emperor the representations 
of this beautiful and touching letter, so full of the 
spirit of justice, patriotism, and enlightenment, Pius 
sent Monsignor (now Cardinal) Morichini to Vi- 
enna. The mission was so far successful that Aus- 
tria requested the British Government u to me- 
diate between herself and Italy on the basis of the 
independence of Lombardy and the duchies, upon 



Revolution. 



93 



condition of an annual payment of 10,000,000 florins 
as their proportion of the national debt of Austria, 
an annual tribute of 4,000,000 florins, and the con- 
cession to Venetia of a separate administration with 
an army of her own under the sway of an Austrian 
archduke." * But this proposal was concealed 
from the Piedmontese king until after it had been 
rejected; and Lord Palmerston, who was all this 
while playing into the hands of the Mazzinian 
party, declined to accept the commission on any 
other condition than the absolute independence of 
certain Venetian provinces. 

Meanwhile the agitation increased at Rome, 
fomented by fresh outbreaks at Paris, Vienna, and 
Naples, and by bad news from the army, where 
the Roman volunteers, routed in battle, revenged 
themselves by accusing their generals of " treason," 
and literally tearing to pieces some obnoxious police 
officials who fell into their hands. When the 
Roman Parliament opened, in June, Count Mami- 
ani prepared a warlike " programme " of the ponti- 
fical policy, in which, assuming to speak in the 
name of His Holiness, he declared that the Pope 
" dispenses the Word of God, prays, blesses, and 
pardons." "Ay," added Pius, in replying some 
time afterwards to an official address, " but it is also 
his office to bind and loose. Priest as well as prince, 
he needs all the liberty that will prevent his action 
from being paralyzed." The opposition between 



* Mr. Legge gives these particulars on the authority of Mazzini. 



94 



Life of Phis IX. 



the nominal sovereign and his ministers was an 
open scandal, and as Austria gained headway 
it became more and more violent. Galletti in 
the cabinet, Sterbini and the Prince of Canino 
in the Parliament, were the most furious of the 
demagogues. In July the Austrians invaded the 
Pontifical States again, and for a second time 
took possession of Ferrara. Pius protested with 
indignation, invoked the protection of the Eu- 
ropean powers, and prepared to expel the in- 
truders by force. But the clubs welcomed this 
fresh cause of popular exasperation. The mob 
demanded arms. The city gates and the Castle 
of S. Angelo were attacked. Sterbini and Gal- 
letti made fiery harangues, declaring that " the peo- 
ple could not commit excess. " A little later a 
courier, breathless and dusty, rode through the 
Corso announcing a great victory of Charles Albert 
over the Austrians. The houses were illuminated ; 
there was talk of forcing the clergy to chant Te 
Deam in the churches. But the next day it was 
discovered that the messenger who entered Rome 
as if from Lombardy by the Porta del Popolo had 
left the city only an hour before by the Porta An- 
gelica, carefully gathering the stains of travel in an 
easy ride along the walls, and had been paid three 
dollars for the performance. Charles Albert had 
been signally defeated; the war was nearing the 
end. In Rome now the ministry was out of office. 
In Bologna, where Gavazzi preached the red de- 
mocracy, anarchy was accompanied by sickening 



Revolution. 95 

excesses. " For two days/' says Farini, "the 
brigands had been slaughtering every man his 
enemy among the Government officers, some of 
them, indeed, disreputable and sorry fellows, others 
respectable. They hunted men down like wild 
beasts; entered their houses, and dragged them 
forth to slaughter. One Bianchi, an inspector 
of police, was lying a-bed in the last agony of 
consumption; they came in, set upon him, and 
cut his throat in the presence of his wife and chil- 
dren. The corpses— a frightful spectacle— remained 
in the public streets. I saw it— saw death dealt 
about, and the abominable chase.'' 

The Pope now prevailed upon Count Rossi to 
become his minister. Rossi was an Italian by birth, 
a Liberal, an old conspirator, an old political exile; 
but he was an able, upright, and fearless man, and 
had been one of the Holy Father's most intimate 
advisers ever since the beginning of the reign. A 
Frenchman by adoption, he had come to Rome in 
the time of Gregory XVI., charged by Louis Phi- 
lippe to negotiate for the removal of the Jesuits 
from France. He remained there as French am- 
bassador till the downfall of the monarchy, and 
had since lived in Rome as a private citizen. The 
restoration of public order and the renewal of ne- 
gotiations for the creation of an Italian confederacy 
were the tasks to which the Pope and the minister 
now applied themselves. Both objects were equally 
hateful to the clubs and the demagogues who had 
now obtained the control of the state. "The war 



9 6 



Life of Pins IX. 



of the kings is over," cried Mazzini- e< the war of 
the peoples must now begin." Sterbini attacked 
the minister furiously in his journal, the Contempo- 
raiieo : " Amidst the laughter and contempt of the 
people he will fall." The 15th of November, two 
months after Rossi's accession to power, was the 
day fixed for the opening of the Parliament. He 
received more than one warning that the same day 
had been appointed for his death. The wife of the 
Minister of War wrote him that his life was to be 
attempted as he entered the Parliament house. A 
Frenchman sent him a note to the same effect. A 
priest stopped him at the Quirinal and repeated the 
warning. The Pope had also heard rumors of the 
plans of the conspirators, and begged Rossi to 
beware. '' They are cowards," replied the count; 
" they will not dare to strike." But he took the 
precaution to post a special guard of carbineers 
near the Cancellaria, where the Parliament held its 
sessions, little thinking that the soldiers themselves 
had been corrupted. " The cause of the Pope," 
he said to one of his colleagues, " is the cause of 
God. I must go where my duty calls me." 

On the night before the 15th a corpse was taken 
from one of the public hospitals and carried secret- 
ly to the little Capranica theatre. There a secret 
band of conspirators rehearsed the assassination, 
and the chosen instrument of the vengeance of the 
secret societies, a young sculptor named Santo 
Costantini, learned by repeated trials where to 
strike. They were waiting for the count next 



Revolution, 



97 



morning at the entrance to the Cancellaria. When 
he stepped from his carriage to cross the court 
fierce countenances scowled upon him; hisses and 
angry cries assailed him. He only smiled con- 
temptuously, and marched on. As he reached the 
staircase they gathered round him. One struck 
him on the side. He turned his head, and Cos- 
tantini plunged a dagger into the carotid artery. 
The count fell, covered with blood. Borne by one 
of his colleagues to the apartments of Cardinal 
Guzzoli hard by, he lived just long enough to re- 
ceive absolution from a priest who was fetched in 
haste from a neighboring church, and so died with- 
out a word. The assassin and his accomplices 
walked away unmolested, the mob and the soldiers 
covering their leisurely retreat. " I have still be- 
fore my eyes/' says Farini, " the livid countenance 
of one who, as he saw me, shouted, ' So fare the 
betrayers of the people ! ' " All night they prome- 
naded the city with songs of triumph. The streets 
were hung with flags. The bloody dagger, decked 
with flowers, was carried as a trophy on the top of 
a tricolored standard, and held up before the win- 
dows of the weeping family of the victim. When 
the news of the murder committed on the stairs 
was carried into the Chamber of Deputies, Sterbini 
exclaimed : " It is nothing ; let us to business." 
Righetti, the deputy Minister of Finance, who wit- 
nessed the assassination, hastened to the Pope. 
After the first moment of agitation Pius fell upon 
his knees and remained some time in silent prayer. 



9 8 



Life of Pius IX. 



" Count Rossi has died a martyr," said he ; " God 
will receive his soul in peace." 

The next day the populace and the soldiers as- 
sembled together in the public squares; Sterbini 
and the Prince of Canino organized themselves into 
a " provisional government " ; the diplomatic corps 
gathered about the Pontiff at the Quirinal ; and 
there, soon after noon, appeared a threatening mob 
to demand the surrender of all power into the 
hands of a ministry of the most extreme democrats 
headed by Sterbini, the convocation of a constitu- 
ent assembly, and the immediate declaration of war 
against Austria. It was the forsworn Galletti who 
entered the palace to announce the popular will. 
The Pope would not listen ; but he empowered 
Galletti to form a cabinet. This was not enough. 
The crowd set fire to the palace. A single volley 
from the Swiss Guard, of whom there were about a 
hundred on duty, drove back the incendiaries, and 
the flames were extinguished. But the insurrection 
was fast spreading. The people seized arms and 
hurried to the assault. Sharp-shooters occupied 
the housetops, sheltered themselves behind the fa- 
mous equestrian groups in the centre of the square, 
and poured a shower of balls into the palace win- 
dows. Monsignor Palma, one of the papal secre- 
taries, was killed. Bullets penetrated to the Pope's 
chamber. The Civic Guard and the carbineers re- 
inforced the mob. Cannon were brought up and 
pointed at the gates. A deputation from the assail- 
ants announced their ultimatum ; they would give 



Revolution, 



99 



His Holiness one hour to consider, at the end of 
which time, if their demands were not granted, they 
would assuredly " break into the Quirinal and put 
to death every inmate thereof, with the single ex- 
ception of the Pope himself." Further resistance 
was impossible. The Holy Father called the diplo- 
matic corps together and told them that he must 
yield : " But let Europe know that I am a prisoner 
here. I have no part in the government ; they shall 
rule in their own name, not in mine." 



CHAPTER IX. 



FLIGHT AND EXILE. 

SURROUNDED by spies and sentries, the 
Pope was in truth a prisoner. " His author- 
ity is now absolutely null," wrote the Duke d'Har- 
court, French ambassador, " and none of his acts 
will be free and voluntary." The Circolo Popolare, 
the most radical of the clubs, was the real govern- 
ment of Rome. For some time the Holy Father 
had considered the advisability of flight, and he ap- 
pears to have almost determined upon seeking 
refuge in France. Spain had offered him an asy- 
lum ; and a safe retreat was likewise open to him 
in the kingdom of Naples. But escape was not 
easy. He was closely watched, and guards even 
invaded his private apartments. On the 2 2(1 
of November, six days after the attack upon the 
Quirinal, he received from the Bishop of Valence, 
in France, a silver pyx in which Pope Pius VI. used 
to carry the Blessed Sacrament suspended from his 
neck during his painful exile. " Heir to the name, 
the see, the virtues, the courage, and many of the 
tribulations of this great pontiff," wrote the bishop, 
•* you will, perhaps, attach some value to this inte- 

IOO 



Flight and Exile. 101 



resting little relic, which 1 trust may not serve the 
same destiny in your Hoiiness's hands as in those 
o iti former possessor." The Pope looked upon 
this as a providential provision for his journey, and 
hesitated no longer. 

It was the Duke d'Harcourt who undertook the 
delicate task of managing the escape from the 
Quirinal, while the Bavarian minister, Count Spaur, 
aided by his quick-witted wife, arranged the rest of 
the journey. The whole adventure seems to have 
beer in great measure of the countess's designing, 
and our knowledge of the incidents is mainly de- 
rived from her interesting published narrative. The 
Pope's faithful gentleman-in-waiting, Filippani, col- 
lected the little articles absolutely needed on the 
route, and at night carried them under his cloak, 
one by one, to the residence of Count Spaur. 
Meanwhile, it was announced in Rome that the 
count, accompanied by his family, was going to 
Naples on a diplomatic errand. The countess 
started^rirst in hei travelling carriage with her son 
and his tutor, Father Liebl, giving out that her hus- 
bandj detained a few hours in Rome by important 
business, would overtake her at Albano. Towards 
evening on the same day (November 24, 1848) the 
Duke d'Harcourt visited the Quirinal in state, and, 
being admitted to a private official interview with 
the Holy Father, began to read to him a series of 
long despatches. He read in a loud tone, so that his 
voice could be heard by the guards in the ante- 
room. If they could have seen what passed as 



102 



Life of Pins IX. 



well as they heard, they would have been very 
much astonished. For no sooner had the duke 
begun than the Pope retired to an inner chamber 
and transformed himself into a simple priest. He 
put on a black robe, an ample cloak, and a low, 
round hat, and, accompanied by Filippani, he 
reached the grand staircase by a private door. 
Twice he narrowly escaped detection. The private 
door, generally left open, was found to be locked, 
and there was a long delay while Filippani searched 
for the key. As they went out a servant who was in 
the secret involuntarily knelt to beg the Pope's 
blessing, but Filippani's whispered reproof brought 
him to his feet again before the guard noticed him. 
There was a hack in waiting, and, exchanging salu- 
tations with the unsuspecting soldiers, the fugitives 
drove to the church of SS. Peter and Marcellinus, 
beyond the Colosseum, where Count Spaur was 
waiting with another carriage. The Pope entered 
it; the count took the reins; they passed out by 
the gate of St. John, near the Lateran, the%ntries 
being satisfied with the count's passport; and then 
they sped the horses along the Appian Way. 

In the meantime the Duke d'Harcourt continued 
for two hours his imaginary discussion in the Holy 
Father's cabinet. The private chaplain came at 
the accustomed hour, as if to read the breviary with 
His Holiness; papers were brought in as usual; 
supper was served; and at last it was announced 
to the guard that the Pope had retired for the 
night. Then the duke took horses in all haste for 



Flight and Exile. 



103 



Civita Vecchia, where a French frigate was in 
readiness to receive him. The first intelligence of 
the Pope's flight was conveyed to the Romans by a 
letter received next morning by the Marquis Sac- 
chetti from the Pope himself. 

The Countess Spaur, not knowing at what hour 
to expect the Pope, had been waiting on the road 
all day in an agony of apprehension. Late in the 
night word was brought to her that the count was 
at a certain fountain on the Appian Way. When 
she drove up she was terrified at finding herself in 
the midst of an armed patrol. Count Spaur was 
answering the questions of the soldiers, and the 
Pope and a trooper stood side by side against the 
fence. The countess did not lose her presence of 
mind. "Come, doctor," she exclaimed, "jump in; 
you have kept us waiting." One of the soldiers 
opened the carriage-door and helped the supposed 
doctor to mount; and, bidding good-night to the 
patrol, the party drove off at full speed towards the 
territory of Naples. The Pope was the first to 
speak. " Courage !" said he; " I carry the Blessed 
Sacrament in the same pyx in which it was borne 
by Pius VI." At Velletri the carriage-lamps were 
lighted, and the Pope and Father Liebl recited the 
itinerarium, or prayers for a journey. The Holy 
Father refreshed himself with part of an orange. In 
crossing the Pontine Marshes they all got a little 
sleep. At Fondi a postilion cried to one of his 
fellows: "Look at that priest; lie is just like the 
picture of the Pope we have at home." They 



104 



Life of Phis IX. 



crossed the Neapolitan frontier at daylight, and as 
soon as they were safe beyond the Pontifical States 
they all recited the Te Deu7ti % 

In the afternoon they reached Gaeta, and were 
joined by Cardinal Antonelli, disguised like the 
Pope. Count Spaur now resigned the care of the 
Holy Father to the secretary of the Spanish embassy, 
and, exchanging carriages with this gentleman, post- 
ed on to Naples, bearing an autograph letter from the 
Pope to the king. It was midnight when he pre- 
sented himself at the royal palace, and, represent- 
ing the urgency of his mission, obtained with some 
difficulty an immediate audience. King Ferdinand 
read with visible emotion the few lines in which the 
Sovereign Pontiff announced his arrival and asked 
a brief hospitality. " Come back at daylight, 
count," said the king, " and you shall have my 
answer." At six, accordingly, Count Spaur re- 
turned. Two frigates were in readiness in the 
harbor. A large body of troops were already em- 
barked. The king, the queen, the whole royal 
family were in readiness to sail with them to meet 
the august exile. A great store of everything 
necessary for the comfort and dignity of His Holi- 
ness had been placed on board, and Ferdinand had 
given close personal attention to all the prepara- 
tions. " Come, count," said he, " we will go 
together." 

But during this interval the strange little party 
at Gaeta had been in trouble. Changing carriages 
with the Spanish secretary, the count had also care- 



Flight and Exile. 



105 



lessly changed passports, and when the Spaniard 
went to call, according to the regulations of the for- 
tress, upon the commandant, Gen. Gross, that gal- 
lant officer, who was a Swiss, addressed him in 
German, and the secretary could not answer. The 
travellers were at once placed under polite surveil- 
lance as suspicious characters. They presented 
themselves first at the bishop's palace, but the 
bishop was absent, and his servants would not 
admit them, notwithstanding the persistent requests 
of the Pope and the cardinal. Then they took 
lodgings at a poor inn, and it was in this humble 
shelter that Pius IX. wrote his first public protest 
against the violence which had driven him from his 
dominions, naming in the same document a com- 
mission to carry on the government during his 
absence, though with no great expectation that it 
would be allowed to act. The frigate conveying 
the French ambassador arrived the next morning, 
and the king and queen landed a few hours after, 
to the unspeakable amazement of the commandant, 
who had no suspicion of the character of the visi- 
tors he had been watching. 

It had been the purpose of Plis Holiness to take 
a Spanish man-of-war at Gaeta, and seek refuge in 
the island of Majorca, the scene of Ins short im- 
prisonment in 1823; but Ferdinand persuaded him 
to remain at Gaeta. The first meeting between his 
Majesty and the Sovereign Pontiff took place at the 
palace, whither Pius proceeded quietly on foot, still 
in his humble black cassock and broad hat. The 



io6 



Life of Pius IX. 



king and queen received him on their knees at the 
foot of the stairs, and lavished upon him every mark 
of honor that it was in their power to bestow. The 
palace was set apart for his use, the royal family re- 
moving to a pavilion not far distant, whence the 
king paid a daily visit to the Holy Father. Fitting 
accommodations were prepared for the cardinals 
and prelates who by various routes soon began to 
find their way to Gaeta. The diplomatic body 
gathered around the improvised papal court, and 
naval vessels of nearly all the Christian powers, in- 
cluding the United Sta'.es, cast anchor in the road- 
stead. As an illustration of the respect shown to 
the Pontiff at Gaeta, Father Bresciani describes a 
papal visit to the United States frigate Pri?iceton<> 
the king and the king's brother following the Pope 
bareheaded in a hot mid day sun from the palace to 
the port, walking deferentially behind him, refusing 
a seat by his side in the stern of the barge, and 
taking a respectful position forward, while as their 
boat passed all the fleet manned the yards, spread 
colors to the breeze, and thundered broadsides. 

The reverence and affection of the whole Catho- 
lic world for the person of Pius IX. seemed to be 
stimulated to an extraordinary degree by his mis- 
fortunes. " Letters were despatched to the glorious 
exile," says Father Bresciani, " from the most re- 
mote corners of the earth — from the islands of Ocea- 
nica, but yesterday, as it were, converted to Chris- 
tianity ; from the Marquesas, the abode of cannibals ; 
and from Australia and New Caledonia — to comfort 



Flight and Exile. 



107 



the Pontiff in his afflictions, to exalt him in his hu- 
miliations, to honor him in the insults and oppro- 
brium heaped upon him by his barbarous and cow- 
ardly subjects in Rome. China, Tartary, the In- 
dies, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Lebanon, Moldavia, 
Servia, Egypt, Algeria, the States of America from 
Canada to Chili, Europe from the extremity of Nor- 
way to Cadiz and Lisbon — all, in every language 
of the world, praised and glorified the invincible 
Pontiff, pouring forth the veneration and love of 
their hearts." The sovereigns, both Catholic and 
non-Catholic, wrote letters of condolence. The 
people organized associations to raise funds for the 
Pope's support. On his part, Pius invoked the in- 
terposition of the Catholic powers in general ; and 
when the men who had driven him out of Rome 
sent urging him to come back — on their terms, not 
on his — he refused to see the deputation, holding 
then, as he did to the end of his life, that the tem- 
poral sovereignty of the Pope was necessary to the 
freedom and independence of the Church, and that 
he could not negotiate for its surrender. 

Spiritual concerns were dearer to him than ever 
in this time of trouble. It was at Gaeta, in Feb- 
ruary, 1849, tnat ne declared by an encyclical let- 
ter his intention to define the dogma of the Imma- 
culate Conception, and instructed the bishops to 
inform him of the feelings and opinions of the 
whole people with respect to it. From his exile also 
he urged the bishops of Italy to fresh zeal in com- 
bating the errors of the time by the education of 



io8 



Life of Pius IX. 



the young, by preaching boldly and constantly the 
sound principles which lie at the basis of Christian 
society, by attacking prevalent vices, and showing 
that the Catholic faith is the true safeguard of na- 
tional prosperity and private virtue. To counter- 
act the abuses of a licentious press he exhorted 
them to cultivate a pure and wholesome literature 
and to publish approved translations of the Holy 
Scriptures. And he repeated with especial earnest- 
ness the recommendations of his first encyclical 
touching the training of the clergy and the disci- 
pline of monastic establishments. 

"While the banished Pope was thus winning the 
respect of the world the miseries of his capital 
were almost beyond description. The rule of the 
clubs was hardly disguised by the merely nominal 
authority of ministries and parliamentary chambers, 
which one by one disappeared and left the control 
of affairs in the hands of a Committee of Public 
Safety. A Constituent Assembly met on the 7th 
of February, 1849, and decreed the deposition of 
the Popedom as a temporal government, and the 
establishment of " a pure democracy 93 under " the 
glorious appellation of the Republic of Rome. " 
With thousands of other republicans and members 
of the revolutionary clubs from different parts of 
the Continent, Mazzini hastened to Rome to direct 
the insurrection which he had been so long prepar- 
ing. An executive triumvirate was named, consist- 
ing of Mazzini, Armellini, and Sam; but the second 
and third of these men counted for little, and 



Flight and Exile, 



109 



Mazzini shared a virtual dictatorship with the mili- 
tary leaders, Garibaldi and Avezzana. The cata- 
logue of outrages committed under this democratic 
despotism, both in Rome and the provinces, is 
almost too black for belief. " Every governor acted 
as he liked," says Felice Orsini, " and some of the 
Liberals took what they considered justice into their 
own hands and committed deplorable homicides." 
The murder of an Irish priest at last caused the 
British Government to interfere, whereupon Maz- 
zini sent Orsini into the Marches to put a stop to 
the massacres. e< A society of assassins afflict An- 
cona and Sinigaglia," wrote this commissioner, 
"spreading desolation and misery over the pro- 
vinces." A secret league called the Infernal Asso- 
ciation took upon itself the function of executing the 
vengeance of the societies. A wretch named Zambi- 
anchi, leader of a band of three hundred bravos who 
had been employed in the revenue service of the 
frontier, became the terror of the provinces, boast- 
ing of the most hideous crimes, and accounting it 
ample justification of a murder that the victim was 
a priest. He stationed himself near the Neapolitan 
boundary, and sent back to Rome all ecclesiastics 
whom he caught on the road to Gaeta; but dis- 
pleased that his prisoners were not immediately put 
to death, he soon marched into the capital to take 
the matter into his own hands. The Convent of S. 
Calisto, in the Trastevere, became a slaughter- 
house where he penned up priests and killed them 
at his leisure. How many suffered in this way can 



no 



Life of Pius IX. 



never be known. When the triumvirate sent to stop 
the murders the bodies of fourteen ecclesiastics 
were found half buried in a garden, and twelve 
prisoners were rescued alive in spite of the re- 
sistance of the butchers. Two men clad as vine- 
dressers were arrested one day as Jesuits in dis- 
guise, and the guards were taking them to prison 
when a mob attacked them on the bridge of S. 
Angelo and put them to a horrible death. The 
pillage of private houses and the wanton destruction 
of public monuments were among the lesser out- 
rages of this reign of anarchy. And the official 
proceedings of the Government matched the lawless 
violence of the populace. Ecclesiastical property 
was seized, convents were suppressed. The confes- 
sionals were taken to make barricades. A forced 
loan was levied upon all persons whose income 
exceeded two thousand crowns, graduated so that 
no one paid less than a quarter of his income, 
and the rich were taxed as much as two-thirds. Silver 
plate was seized, and domiciliary visits were made in 
search of it. The shrines and altars were stripped 
bare. The palaces of the cardinals were sacked. 
Profane rites were celebrated in St. Peter's at 
Easter under the auspices of the Government, and 
a suspended priest gave a travesty of the papal ben- 
ediction from the balcony. The canons of St. 
Peter's were fined for refusing to participate in such 
sacrilegious proceedings, and the provost of the 
cathedral of Sinigaglia was put to death for de- 
clining to hail the republic by a Te Dcum. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE RESTORATION. 

WHEN the news of the flight to Gaeta reach- 
ed Paris the government of Gen. Cavaig- 
nac was within ten days of its close, and the Ro- 
man question became a foremost issue in the ap- 
proaching election. Cavaignac immediately sent 
an envoy to Gaeta, and ordered a brigade of 
troops to be got ready " to intervene in the name 
of the French Republic for the restoration of the 
Pontiff's personal liberty, in case he should have 
been deprived of it." In acknowledging this ac- 
tion the Holy Father expressed his gratitude for the 
attachment shown him by the French nation, and 
intimated a purpose of seeking hospitality at no 
distant day on French soil. The correspondence 
was published by Cavaignac's supporters as a bid for 
his re-election. But Louis Napoleon bid a little 
higher. He was suddenly and opportunely afflicted 
by the conduct of his cousin, the Prince of Canino, 
with whom for a long while he had held no inter- 
course, and he wrote a note to the papal nuncio, 
lamenting that the eldest son of Lucien Bonaparte 
in 



112 



Life of Pius IX. 



" could not see that the temporal sovereignty of the 
venerable Head of the Church was intimately con- 
nected with the glory of Catholicism and the liberty 
and independence of Italy." 1 he last line might 
be understood in different ways, but the note serv- 
ed its purpose. Louis Napoleon was elected Pre- 
sident of the Republic by an immense majority. 
There was no question that the restoration of the 
Pope would be speedily undertaken by foreign arms ; 
for while the Catholic powers were determined to 
defend the rights of the Church, the czar and the 
king of Prussia were convinced that the overthrow 
of the Mazzinian Republic was necessary to the 
order of Europe. It only remained to decide 
which should make the first move. Spain, during the 
month of December, addressed a note to France, 
Austria, Bavaria, Sardinia, Tuscany, and Naples, 
inviting them to consider the best means to re-es- 
tablish the authority of the Pope, and hence origi- 
nated a diplomatic conference at Gaeta, in which 
the proposed intervention was fully discussed. It 
was France who took the lead, anticipating the ac- 
tion with which the other powers were quite ready 
to charge themselves. Nothing could have been 
more complete than the justification of her course 
subsequently presented to the French Assembly by 
M. Thiers, in the form of an elaborate report from 
a committee. He considered the* case in its politi- 
cal as well as its religious aspects : 

" In a political point of view an interposition was im- 
peratively called for by the interests of Italy and Italian 



The Restoration, 



"3 



liberty; for the Pope would have been restored without 
us, and that by Austria. Austria, using the unquestion- 
able rights of war, had reconquered Lombardy, in- 
vaded Piedmont, the duchies of Parma and Modena, 
Tuscany, and a part of the Roman States. The govern- 
ments, having met with an ill return for the concessions 
they had made, were not disposed to renew them ; the 
enemies of liberal reforms found a powerful argument in 
the excesses which had been committed ; sensible per- 
sons were discouraged, and the masses, after so much 
dangerous excitement, were reduced to submission by 
the pressure of physical force. Were no fragments of 
the hopes of 1847 to be saved ? France did not think so, 
and such was the origin and the reason of her expedition 
to Rome. The question was whether France should 
suffer Austria to push her invasion as far as Rome, and 
thus to become both morally and materially the mistress 
of almost the whole of Italy. 

4 The Catholic powers had assembled at Gaeta to plan 
the re-establishment of an authority which is necessary 
to the Christian universe. In truth, without the author- 
ity of the Sovereign Pontiff Catholic unity would be dis- 
solved ; Catholicism would be severed into sects and 
perish ; and the moral world, already so rudely shaken, 
would fall into universal ruin. But Catholic unity, re- 
quiring a certain spiritual submission from Christian na- 
tions, would be inadmissible if the Pontiff, in whom it 
is embodied, were not perfectly independent; if, upon 
the territory which ages have assigned to him, and which 
all nations have respected, another sovereign, whether 
prince or people, were to rise to dictate laws to him. For 
the Papacy there can be no other independence but sov- 
ereignty. We have here an interest of a paramount na- 
ture which is rightly made to overrule the private inter- 
ests of nations, just as, in a state, the public interest 
overrules what is inJividu.il ; and it fully justified the 



H4 



Life of Puts IX. 



Catholic powers in re-establishing Pius IX. upon the 
pontifical throne." 

The conference at Gaeta met on the 30th of 
March, and three weeks afterwards the French 
expedition embarked. The troops, commanded by 
General Oudinot, landed at Civita Vecchia, and 
marched hastily upon Rome under the impression 
that there would be no serious defence. The army 
of Garibaldi and Avezzana was largely composed 
of Lombards, Genoese, and foreigners, and the 
Romans were supposed to be watching for the 
French as deliverers. But General Oudinot under- 
rated the revolutionary soldiers, and misunderstood 
the citizens. The first attack was repulsed; it was 
only after a siege of two months, memorable for 
bravery on both sides, that the victorious army 
entered Rome, June 30, and Colonel Xiel was 
despatched to Gaeta to present to the Holy 
Father the keys of his capital. Austria had 
already restored the pontifical authority in the 
Legations. Mazzini, Garibaldi, and the other 
leaders of the ruined republic took flight. "Ac- 
cept, General," wrote the Pope to General Oudi- 
not, i: my congratulations for the principal part 
which is due to you in this event — congratula- 
tions not for the blood which has been shed, for 
that my soul abhors, but for the triumph of order 
over anarchy, for liberty restored to honest and 
Christian persons, for whom it will not henceforth 
be a crime to enjoy the property which God has al- 
lotted to them, and to worship in due religious 



The Restoratio7i. 



pomp without danger to life or estate. With regard 
to the grave difficulties that may hereafter occur, I 
rely on the divine protection." 

Eut the Holy Father did not at once resume his 
throne. Louis Napoleon's complex policy in these 
events was not in accord either with the wishes of 
Catholic France or the sentiments even of the 
French Assembly, and he was false alike to the 
Pope and to his own people. He was quite as 
anxious to further the ambition of Piedmont and 
encourage the aspirations of Young Italy as to 
thwart the influence of Austria by assuming the 
protection of the Holy See. During the siege he 
sent M. de Lesseps to Rome to negotiate with 
Mazzini an accommodation which General Oudinot 
indignantly rejected. Shortly after the capture of 
the city Oudinot was replaced by General Rostolan. 
The prince-president then wrote a letter to Colonel 
Edward Ney, in which, after declaring that " the 
French Republic had not sent an army to Rome to 
extinguish Italian liberty but to regulate it," he in- 
structed this officer to inform the general that the 
French tricolor must not protect any act or policy 
inconsistent with the purposes of the intervention, 
and that the programme of the restoration ought to 
be " a general amnesty, lay administration, the Code 
Napoleon, and a liberal government." This was 
ostensibly a private letter, and the straightforward 
soldier, Rostolan, refused with warmth to permit 
its publication within his lines. It was accordingly 
printed at Florence, and Rostolan was speedily 



n6 Life of Pius IX. 



relieved; whereupon the French ambassador, M. 
de Courcelles, resigned. 

No one understood better than Pius IX. the in- 
grain duplicity of Louis Napoleon, and the com- 
plicity of this inveterate conspirator in the plots 
for the destruction of the temporal power. He 
rightly interpreted the letter as an infringement 
of his independence and an attempt to bind the 
Holy See in servitude to the Bonaparte ambition; 
and he refused to re-enter his States until he could 
go in the fulness of his sovereign authority. Cardi- 
nal Antonelli, henceforth until the day of v his death 
the papal Secretary of State, commented upon 
the letter in a note to the governors of the pro- 
vinces, remarking that it " had no official charac- 
ter," and was "viewed with displeasure even by the 
French authorities in Rome " ; and adding: "The 
Holy Father is seriously occupying himself in giv- 
ing to his subjects such reforms as he believes 
conducive to their true and solid good, nor has 
any power imposed laws upon him in reference to 
this. It is the interest of all the powers to sustain 
the liberty and independence of the Supreme Pon- 
tiff for the peace of Europe." Meanwhile the Pope 
appointed a commission of three cardinals to reor- 
ganize the government ad interim^ and in Septem- 
ber he removed to Portici, near Naples, whence he 
issued a motu proprio establishing boards for the 
reform of the laws and the finances, granting ex- 
tensive provincial and municipal franchises, and 
admitting laymen to the administration. An am- 



The Restoration. 



117 



nesty was declared for all except members of the 
successive revolutionary governments, chiefs of 
military bodies, those who had benefited by the 
previous amnesty and had broken their parole, and 
those who, besides political offences, had been 
guilty of ordinary crimes punishable by the exist- 
ing laws. For seven months the Holy Father 
remained at Portici ; and at last, having obtained 
from Louis Napoleon (whose schemes were not 
sustained by the French Assembly) the pledges 
which he demanded, he began his homeward 
journey. 

His progress from town to town was a series of 
triumphs. Whatever disaffection there may have 
been in Rome and one or two other large cities — ■ 
and most of the contemporary accounts of these 
events are so colored by the political and religious 
prepossessions of the writers that they cannot be 
safely trusted — there is no question that the rural 
population was devout and loyal, and welcomed 
his return with unfeigned joy. In Rome the clubs 
and secret societies did what they could to mar 
the celebration. Placards were posted in the Corso 
threatening death to all who should welcome " the 
priest Mastai." Twice during the night before his 
arrival the Quirinal was set on fire. Nevertheless, 
when the cortege entered, on the 12th of April, 
1850, the same gate of St. John by which the 
Supreme Pontiff had fled disguised and under 
cover of the night nearly seventeen months before, 
the city seemed to be wild with delight. "The 



u8 



Life of Pins IX. 



whole population of Rome," wrote the unsympa- 
thetic correspondent of the Journal ties Debats, 
" fell at the feet of their Pope and received his 
benediction. It was one of those grand popular 
commotions which can never be arranged to order, 
which spring only from deep popular feeling." 
The chapter of St. John Lateran met the procession 
as it entered the magnificent square in front of the 
venerable basilica— the cathedral of the popes, the 
mother church of Christendom; the Pontiff de- 
scended from his carriage, and blessing the kneeling 
populace and soldiers, gave thanks to God before 
the grand altar of the church; he traversed the 
whole city, cheered at every step with enthusiastic 
vivas and entered St. Peter's, where the Te Deicm 
was followed by the Benediction of the Blessed 
Sacrament. Later in the day the Holy Father 
received the diplomatic corps, the cardinals, the 
nobility, and others, at the Vatican, and in that 
famous palace, surrounded by priceless treasures 
of art and science, he now fixed his permanent 
residence, the Quirinal, with its melancholy associa- 
tions, being henceforth hateful to him. The de- 
monstrations of rejoicing were prolonged for several 
days, with illuminations of the whole city and ser- 
vices in the churches, and they culminated in the 
proclamation of a jubilee throughout the Christian 
world. 



CHAPTER XI. 



THE TIME OF PEACE. 



HE task which now fell upon Pope Pius IX. 



X was hard and ungrateful. Despite the 
shouts which hailed his triumphant return, there 
was a bitter hatred of ecclesiastical government 
among the middle classes in Rome, a general cor- 
ruption and demoralization of society, a decay of 
faith and devotional sentiment among the young. 
The convulsions of the revolutionary period and 
the secret activity of the oath-bound associations 
had left effects which were not to be obliterated by 
a battle and a procession. The restored govern- 
ment, owing its stability to a French army of occu- 
pation, had to undertake the restoration of political 
and religious order under many trying and unnatu- 
ral conditions. The next few years are commonly 
described by unfriendly historians as years of severe 
reaction. This is a great mistake. Certainly the 
Pope made no more attempts to govern by the aid 
of a parliament, a radical ministry, and a democra- 
tic national guard; but he pursued the same gene- 
ral line of practical administrative reform which he 
had adopted in 1846 ; he ruled with characteristic 




120 Life of Pius IX. 



mildness ; he gradually relaxed the exceptions to 
the amnesty, so that a large proportion of the exiles 
were allowed to return ; he restored the shattered 
finances, redeeming even the worthless paper money 
issued by the insurgents ; he revived industry and 
trade ; he built up the declining population, so 
that Rome, which had 180,000 inhabitants at the 
time of his accession, and lost no fewer than 20,- 
000 during the reign of the revolution, contained 
220,000 before the papal government was over- 
thrown in 1870. The French envoy, Count de 
Rayneval, sent an elaborate report t j his Govern- 
ment in 1856 on the state of society in the Papal 
States and the character of the Holy Father's ad- 
ministration, which he declared to be one of 
the most equitable and benevolent in Europe. 
" Never," said he, " lias a more exalted spirit of cle- 
mency been seen to preside over a restoration. No 
vengeance has been exercised on those who caused 
the overthrow of the pontifical government ; no 
measures of rigor have been adopted against them. 
The Pope has contented himself with depriving 
them of the power of doing harm by banishing 
them from the land. No imprisonment, no trials 
even, have taken place, except occasionally in con- 
sequence of the obstinacy of certain individuals 
who, insisting on being tried, have been condemn- 
ed, and punished by being presented with a pass- 
port. As to the flagrant conspiracies which follow- 
ed the return of the Pope, it was his boundeir duty 
to take measures against them as well as against 



The Time of Peace. 121 



the subsequent assassinations. These measures 
were taken in the most regular manner. The 
Holy Father never failed to mitigate the severity 
of the sentences. Many of the persons most 
deeply compromised obtained their liberty after a 
certain time without the condition of exile. At the 
present moment it is difficult to ascertain the exact 
number of exiles who are forbidden to enter the 
Roman States for political reasons ; but with respect 
to the authors of the revolution of 1849, it is 
thought that it does not amount to a hundred." * 
The count was at pains to dispel the common illu- 
sion that the papal rule was a government by 
priests. Outside of the capital the total number of 
ecclesiastics of all ranks employed in the adminis- 
tration was 98, against 5,059 laymen. In Rome 
itself, where some of the departments, especially in 
the Ministry of Justice, were occupied partly with 
ecclesiastical affairs, the clerical officials were 96 
and the laymen 5,000. These figures did not in- 
clude the Ministry of War, which had no ecclesias- 

* This estimate was too low. A table published in the Dublin Fe- 
vieiv in 1856 gave the total number excluded from the benefit of the 
amnesty as 262, of whom 59 had since been pardoned, leaving 203 in 
banishment. There was, however, "a larger class of voluntary exiles 
not formally excepted from the amnesty, but who would not be allowed 
to enter the Papal States without special permission. The gross num- 
ber is 1,273 ; but as of these 629 are not natives of them, the number of 
subjects amounts to 644. Of these, again, 152 are persons who either 
have had banishment inflicted as their sentence or who have asked for 
it as commutation of punishment ; so that the number is finally reduced 
to 492. Many of these cannot return, because they would immediately 
be arrested for common crimes ; the rest are admissible upon petition, if 
their conduct while abroad has not compromised them." 



1 22 



Life of Fins IX. 



tical functionaries ; on the other hand, the roll of the 
provincial employees of both classes was partly re- 
peated in the statistics of the central ministerial 
bureaus to which they were subordinate. The pro- 
portion of laymen to ecclesiastics in Rome and all 
the provinces was So to i.* The criminal courts 
and inferior civil tribunals contained no ecclesiastics. 

With regard to the state of public feeling at that 
time, Count de Rayneval's report was not reassur- 
ing. " In the lower depths of society, !, said he, 
" Carbonarism is kept up; it continues to make re- 
cruits; the dagger here is still held in honor; the 
end to be obtained is the upsetting of every social 
hierarchy. The followers of Mazzini form already 
a class in some degree above these. The universal 
republic, the unity of Italy, constitutional govern- 
ment, war against Austria, is their programme. Di- 
rected by the committees of London and Geneva, 
their watchword for the present is quiet and in- 
action until the return of their chiefs by means of 
an amnesty, and the departure of the foreign troops, 
give them an opportunity of operating with a chance 
of success. This section extends to a certain por- 
tion of the middle class. This class, and the higher 
classes in general, are tormented with the desire of 
taking a part in public affairs. The example of 
Piedmont is turning their heads. Convinced that 

* Another authority, of the same date, shows that the whole number 

of c u Hcal functionaries in Rome and the provinces (not including prison 
chaplains and others whose employments were strictly ecclesiastical) 
was 113, while the lay functionaries were 6,853. 



The Time of Peace. 



12$ 



the presence of the Pope is an invincible obstacle 
to the realization of their projects, they earnestly 
pray for the annihilation of the pontifical power. 
Taxed more lightly than the majority of European 
countries, they complain that they are crushed 
under the weight of fiscal imposition. At the same 
time they complain of the state for not undertak- 
ing great works which it is their duty to undertake 
themselves. Finally, they profess to have a great 
fear of the Mazzinians, and at the same time are 
opening the door to them." Between the party of 
progress and the extreme conservatives was a large 
body of orderly citizens indifferent to everything 
except their own prosperity. "Anywhere else such 
a party would furnish the government with a good 
point d'appui ; but where the only universal rule is 
laisser faire, with the reservation of the right of 
complaining when the thing is done instead of be- 
forehand, how can such friends be trusted ?" 

Such was the condition of Rome when the Holy 
Father returned from exile. But for a few years an 
outward peace was preserved, and under the influ- 
ence of institutions of religion and education and 
the advance in material prosperity society began to 
recover a more healthy tone. The interests of the 
universal Church received the most watchful care 
during this anxious time. In Austria, in some of 
the smaller German States, in Tuscany, in Naples, 
in Portugal, in South America, Pius obtained, by 
concordats or otherwise, the abrogation of laws 
that obstructed the independence of the Church. 



124 



Life of Pius IX. 



In September, 1850, he restored the Catholic hier- 
archy of England, appointing Dr. Wiseman Arch- 
bishop of Westminster, with twelve suffragan sees — 
an act which provoked an extraordinary outbreak 
of English bigotry, but gave a great impulse to the 
progress of the faith. The episcopate was also re- 
stored to Holland. The Eastern Church was ex- 
horted to return to Catholic unity; and the Catho- 
lics of Armenia were addressed by an encyclical 
letter. The Church in the United States was 
strengthened by the creation of the archbishoprics 
of New York, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and New 
Orleans (1850); and in 1853 Monsignor Bedini, 
nuncio to Brazil, was sent to this country as a 
special envoy, bearing an autograph letter of salu- 
tation from Pius to President Pierce — a mission 
which the United States representative at Rome, 
Mr. Cass, in his official despatch to the Secretary 
of State, described as "a new and additional testi- 
monial of the highly favorable and friendly senti- 
ments entertained by His Holiness Pius IX. to- 
wards the government and institutions of the United 
States." The disgraceful scenes of mob violence 
which disturbed the j mrney of this amiable and 
distinguished prelate, and the still more disgraceful 
failure of the public authorities to protect him, will 
long be remembered with shame by American citi- 
zens. 

But the most important event of the short days 
of peace was the formal definition of the doctrine 
of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Vir- 



i 



The Time of Peace. 125 

gin Mary as an article of the Catholic faith. The 
letter to the bishops of the world, written during the- 
banishment at Gaeta, had been answered by a 
multitude of addresses from all parts of Christen- 
dom, testifying the faith and desires of the people. 
The commission of cardinals had collected the 
concurrent teachings of the past ages. In July, 
1854, a jubilee was proclaimed in preparation for 
the solemnity, and the 8th of December, feast of 
the Immaculate Conception, was appointed for 
the definition. Forty-three archbishops and ninety- 
two bishops gathered at Rome, with the full col- 
lege of cardinals, for this memorable occasion. 
The buli was considered in a general meeting of 
the fathers ; but when the question arose whether 
the dogma should be defined in the name of the 
assembled episcopate or by the sole authority of 
the Sovereign Pontiff, a scene occurred, which is 
thus described by Monsignor Audisio, who was an 
eye-witness of it: "It was the last session; noon 
had just struck; the bishops knelt to recite the 
Angelus. After they resumed their places a few 
words only were spoken, when suddenly an accla- 
mation to the Holy Father broke out, a cry of eter- 
nal adhesion to the primacy of the see of St. Peter: 
1 Petre, doce nos ; confirma fratres ttws / — Peter, 
teach us ; confirm thy brethren ! 1 and the debate 
closed. " Thus the nature of the definition, as the 
exercise of the Pontiff's supreme and infallible ma- 
gisterium, was clearly demonstrated. The gather- 
ing of the bishops was in no sense an oecumenical 



126 



Life of Pius IX, 



council, and the doctrine of the papal infallibility 
was distinctly asserted, with the joyful assent of the 
whole Catholic world. Here, then, we have the 
first of that series of striking manifestations of the 
plenitude of the teaching authority of the Pope 
personally which have already been referred to as a 
marked characteristic of the pontificate of Pius 
IX. 

On the morning of the 8th of December the 
bishops in white copes and mitres assembled around 
the Pontiff in the Sistine Chapel, and, chanting the 
Litany of the Saints, proceeded in order of rank 
down the grand staircase of the Vatican and into 
St. Peter's. Ail knelt for a moment before the 
chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, and then the pro- 
cession moved on to the grand altar beneath the 
dome, where Mass was celebrated in presence of 
His Holiness. It was after the Gospel had been 
chanted, in Latin and Greek, that the dean of the 
Sacred College, accompanied by the senior arch- 
bishop and senior bishop present, and archbishops 
of the Greek and Armenian rites, advanced to the 
throne and besought the Vicar of Christ to pro- 
nounce the definition. It is related that when the 
Holy Father, after the singing of the Veni Creator, 
rose in the midst of the vast and silent multitude 
and read the decree, his voice trembled and broke, 
and his eyes filled with tears. To commemorate the 
solemnity he afterwards caused a column of white 
marble, surmounted by a bronze statue of the Vir- 
gin Immaculate, and encompassed at the base by 



The Time of Peace. 



127 



figures of Moses, David, Isaias, and Ezechiel, to be 
erected opposite the Propaganda. 

The condemnation of errors in faith and philo- 
sophy into which distinguished Catholics like Gio- 
berti and Ventura had been betrayed ; protests 
against the violation of the rights of the Church and 
the freedom of conscience by secular governments; 
the completion and consecration of the splendid 
basilica of St. Paul-without-the- Walls, destroyed by 
fire in the days of Pius VII., and rebuilt by the 
care of successive popes ; the restoration of the an- 
cient church of St. Agnes in Via Nomeniana, in 
remembrance of a providential escape from death 
at the convent of St. Agnes, in April, 1855, when 
the Pope and a large number of other persons were 
precipitated fifteen or twenty feet, amid rubbish and 
broken tiles, by the giving way of a floor — such 
were some of the labors which filled the ten years 
following the restoration. Education was pro- 
moted by the enlargement of the faculties of the 
universities, the opening of schools, and the estab- 
lishment of new colleges. The Seminario Pio was 
founded at the Pontiff's private cost to train a 
chosen body of priests selected for merit from the 
various dioceses of Italy. The Collegio Pio (a 
different institution) was designed for English eccle- 
siastics, and especially for converts from Angli- 
canism. Theological schools were created and 
endowed for the French, for the Spanish-Americans, 
and later for the United States, the building which 
the last-named establishment occupies being the 



128 



Life of Pius IX. 



Holy Father's gift. Charitable and industrial en- 
terprises were multiplied. The construction of 
railways and telegraphs was fostered. The fine 
arts found in Pius IX. a generous patron, the mu- 
seums a munificent benefactor ; his enthusiasm in- 
spired the antiquary ; his purse defrayed the cost 
of excavations ; his enlightened care preserved 
monuments of Christian and pagan antiquity, and 
rescued early paintings and mosaics from impend- 
ing ruin. He built one of the great buttresses 
which saved the crumbling walls of the Colosseum, 
and restored some of the masonry to its original 
condition. He turned aside the flow of water 
which threatened the triumphal arches of Constan- 
tine and Septimius Severus. He completed costly 
explorations in the Roman Forum, and caused the 
recovered fragments of architecture to be placed 
and secured in their proper position. He un- 
covered the long-hidden Appian Way. He pur- 
sued with rich results the long-pending excavations 
of the Palace of the Caesars. He established the 
Commission of Sacred' Archaeology, under which 
such magnificent work has been accomplished in 
the Catacombs; and he founded the Christian 
Museum at the Lateran, for the reception and dis- 
play of the priceless relics of Christian antiquity. 
Many of the works I have thus hastily enu- 
merated were still in progress at the close of 
his government ; many were prosecuted at his 
expense up to the close of his life, although 
the kingdom of Italy had appropriated to itself 



The Time of Peace. 



129 



the objects upon which so much care was ex- 
pended. 

In May, 1857, the Pope began a tour through 
his States, passing by Spoleto, Loreto, Sinigaglia, 
and Imola to Bologna, and returning by Pisa and 
Volterra. At various cities on the route he received 
distinguished guests — the Austrian Archduke Maxi- 
milian, the Governor of Lombardy and Venice, the 
Duke and Duchess of Modena, the Duchess of 
Parma, the King of Bavaria — and at the request of 
the Grand Duke of Tuscany he visited Florence, 
where magnificent quarters were prepared for him 
in the Pitti Palace. He spent four months on the 
journey, inspecting a vast number of public institu- 
tions, and giving especial attention to the reform 
of the prisons, which was always an object very 
dear to his heart. Everywhere the people received 
him with the warmest marks of affection, and the 
legations, which had been in rebellion against his 
authority so short a time before, and were to be 
separated from his dominions so short a time after- 
ward, were prodigal in demonstrations of loyalty. 
In like manner his return to Rome was made a 
popular festival. Those who know the unstable 
and excitable disposition of the Italian people will 
not find it hard to believe that their acclamations 
were sincere and their enthusiasm was genuine 
though fleeting. 

In this stately progress Pius was no less acces- 
sible to the poor than during his walks at Rome. 
A sick woman threw herself in the way as he passed, 



130 



Life of Pius IX, 



and cried : " Holy Father, I am a poor dying mother, 
and these two children that you see will be left 
destitute if I am taken. Save me ! Give me back 
my life !" 

" My poor child," said he, " I am not what you 
take me for. I have no power over your disease, 
but I have a heart to feel for you and a word of 
hope to console you. God is infinitely good. Per- 
haps you do not pray enough. Come, now ; for 
nine days address yourself to him who is the Provi- 
dence of orphans and of mothers. I will unite my 
prayers with yours during the same time, and I 
hope Heaven will hear you. Let us begin at once." 
The Pope and the poor woman knelt down to- 
gether, and all the Holy Father's suite likewise fell 
on their knees. What became of the woman after- 
wards we are not told. 

A family from New Orleans visiting Rome had 
with them a slave named Margaret, who, being a 
devout Catholic, was very anxious to stand where 
she could see the Pope and get his blessing. Pius 
heard of the woman, and the next day a papal dra- 
goon was seen riding up and down the Via Con-" 
dotti, making enquiries for " Mademoiselle Mar- 
guerite," for whom he had a letter of audience. At 
the appointed time the poor slave found herself 
waiting in the midst of a brilliant company at the 
Vatican. When the Pontiff was disengaged the 
first name called was that of " Mademoiselle Mar- 
guerite." " My child," said the Holy Father, 
" there are many great people waiting, but I wish 



Co 



The Time of Peace. 13 1 

to speak to you the first. Though you are the least 
upon earth, you may be the greatest in the sight of 
God.' 5 He talked with her for twenty minutes, 
enquired about her condition and her fellow-slaves, 
and dismissed her with a blessing for herself and 
" all those about her." The welfare of the negroes 
in the Southern States of America always gave him 
deep concern, and special missions among them 
were organized with his assistance and his particu- 
lar benediction. His tender heart warmed instinc- 
tively to all who were in bondage or in prison. 
Giving audience to an English bishop who was 
about to sail for his diocese at Hobart Town, he 
said : " Be kind, my son, to all your flock, but be 
kindest to the condemned." When Jefferson Davis 
was imprisoned at Fortress Monroe Pius sent his 
likeness to the ex-President of the Confederacy, 
writing underneath : Venite ad 7ne o?7ines, qui laboratis^ 
et onerati estis, et ego reficiam vos } dicit Dominus — ■ 
" Come to me all you that labor, and are burdened, 
and I will refresh you, saith the Lord." 

When the cholera was raging in Rome he went 
to the hospitals, not to pay a formal visit, but to 
minister to the sick with his own hands and assist 
them in their last agony. In the cholera hospital 
for women a poor Jewess died in his arms. The 
sick soldiers in the military hospitals were the ob- 
jects of his most affectionate care. One day, when 
all the attendants, as well as those patients who 
were well enough to be out of bed, were kneeling 
for his blessing, he saw a young man in the back- 



132 



Life of Pius IX. 



ground, standing, but with an air of respect and 
embarrassment. " Why do you not come to me 
like the others ?" said Pius. 

"Holy Father, I am a Protestant physician." 

" A physician ! Well, what of that ? I like 
physicians ; I owe them a great deal. But you 
say that you are a Protestant, too. Ah, my son, 
what do you protest against, and why do you pro- 
test?" And so saying he blessed the young man 
and went on without waiting for an answer. But 
his questions were like the seed that bore good 
fruit, and in a few days the doctor was received 
into the Church. 

It was just after the Pope's return from the tour 
of his States that the notorious " Mortara case " 
threw the Protestant world into a paroxysm of anti- 
popery excitement. The Church, regarding the 
true faith as the most precious of gifts, held that a 
child baptized into the fold of Christ must not be 
deprived of the privilege this sacrament confers, 
even by the authority of its parents. Hence, by an 
old law of the Roman States, it was provided that 
the baptized children of Jews should be removed 
from the parental control and brought up as Chris- 
tians. To protect the rights of the family, how- 
ever, it was forbidden to baptize the child of a Jew 
without the consent of its natural guardians, unless 
the child were at the point of death; and, as a 
further precaution, Jewish households were prohi- 
bited from hiring Christian servants. In contraven- 
tion of this law an Israelite family of Bologna, 



The Time of Peace. 



133 



named Mortara, employed a Christian servant, 
who baptized the boy Edgar while he was danger- 
ously ill, and on his recovery he was removed, in his 
seventh year, to the House of Catechumens at 
Rome. Denunciations of this transaction came 
with a bad grace from the Liberals of Europe, who 
were asserting the right of the state to control the 
religious belief of its subjects; with a still worse 
grace from the Protestants of the United States, 
where the kidnapping of Catholic children is legal- 
ized, and little vagrants, imprisoned in Houses of 
Refuge, are not allowed to practise the religion of 
their parents or receive the ministrations of a priest 
— being condemned to Protestantism fur life as a 
punishment for poverty and idleness. u You arc 
very dear to me, my son/' said Pius to young Mor- 
tara ten years afterwards, "for I Bought you for 
Christ with a great price. Yes, you cost me a 
large ransom. On your account a storm of invec- 
tive broke out everywhere against me and against 
the Apostolic See. Governments and peoples, the 
powers of the earth, and journalists, who are also 
mighty ones in these days, declared war against me. 
Sovereigns even took the field and sent me diplo- 
matic notes through their ambassadors, all on your 
account. They complained of the wrong done to 
your parents because you were regenerated by holy 
baptism and received such instruction as it pleased 
God that you should have; but nobody pities me, 
the father of all the faithful, when schism tears from 
me thousands of children in Poland or corrupts 



*34 



Life of Pius IX. 



them by pernicious teachings. The peoples and 
the governments have nothing to say now when I 
cry out against the cruel wrong done to this part of 
the flock of Christ, ravaged by the "robber in full 
day. Nobody stirs to help the father and his chil- 
dren." 



CHAPTER XII. 



PIEDMONT AND THE POPE. 

DRIVEN out of Rome by the victory of the 
French arms, the atheistic conspiracy trans- 
ferred itself to Turin. The peoples, as the event 
proved, were not yet ready for the war which 
Mazzini proclaimed in their name, and once more 
the revolution trusted its faith to princes. Its ob- 
jects were unchanged ; its animosity against the 
Catholic faith as the bulwark of political order, and 
the Holy See as the centre of Christian society, was 
unmitigated ; but its methods of attack were ac- 
commodated to new circumstances. To destroy 
Catholic unity by detaching national churches from 
their supreme bishop, to silence the clergy, to dis- 
perse the religious orders, to expel God from the 
schools — this was the system of education which 
Mazzini laid down for his followers, and this was 
the scheme which they applied to their operations in 
Italy. Crushed by the disaster of Novara in March, 
1849, the unfortunate Charles Albert abdicated in 
favor of his son, Victor Emanuel, and after visit- 
ing, alone and unknown, a mountain convent where 
he confessed and received the Blessed Eucharist, 
135 



136 



Life of Pius IX. 



he retired to Portugal, and there he soon died. 
Victor Emanuel was more easily controlled by 
the secret societies than his chivalrous father, and 
what manner of bargain he made with them for 
the crown of Italy we may judge from the facts of 
history. The secularization of teaching began in 
Sardinia during the last. years of Charles Albert; 
the active persecution and spoliation of the Church 
followed almost immediately upon the accession of 
Victor Emanuel. For instructing his clergy how 
to conduct themselves with reference to a law in- 
fringing on ecclesiastical rights the Archbishop of 
Turin was marched to jail under a guard of sol- 
diers. A second time he was arrested and im- 
prisoned, forbidden to communicate with his vicar- 
general, and at last banished. ' A prison chaplain 
who asked prayers for him was dismissed from his 
employment. The Archbishop of Cagliari was 
likewise banished, and the property of both the 
illustrious exiles was confiscated. The Archbishop 
of Sassari was placed under arrest. In less than 
ten years fifteen out of the forty-one sees in the 
kingdom of Sardinia were empty, either by the ex- 
pulsion of the bishops or the refusal of the Govern- 
ment to allow vacancies to be filled. Police agents 
were instructed to watch for the publication of pas- 
torals or the uttering of " observations savoring of 
insubordination from the pulpit," and to arrest the 
authors of such discourses without delay. Heavy 
taxes were laid upon church property, priests were 
reduced to beggary, and finally, in 1855, a general 



Piedmont and the Pope. 137 



law was adopted, in direct violation of the consti- 
tution of the kingdom, suppressing religious com- 
munities and corporations and confiscating all their 
property. 

By this act nearly eight thousand members of 
pious communities were deprived of their homes 
and possessions. But even before the passing of 
the law many of the convents had been summarily 
emptied, and nuns had been turned into the street 
at night and without warning. A series of attacks 
upon Christian education culminated with the 
establishment of a state school of heretical theolo- 
gy. In the university of Turin it was taught that 
the state is omnipotent over the Church,- that ma- 
trimony cannot be proved a sacrament, that the 
Church has no right to pronounce upon the im- 
pediments to marriage, and that the temporal power 
of the Pope is incompatible with his spiritual power. 
The Holy See condemned these teachings, but the 
Government ordered that all professors in the dio- 
cesan seminaries should follow the same pro- 
gramme ; and, finally, that no clergyman should 
receive a benefice without having attended the 
proscribed school. The Holy Father protested 
against all these wrongs in diplomatic notes, in al- 
locutions, in eloquent letters to the imprisoned con- 
fessors ; but the government replied with insults. 

Then came the demonstration of Count Cavour 
at the congress of 1856, when, with sublime ef- 
frontery, considering what lie was doing, he declar- 
ed the Papacy " a source of perturbation to the 



138 



Life of Pius IX. 



tranquillity of Europe and a focus of disorder in 
the centre of Italy." He proposed the separation 
of the legations from the rest of the Roman States 
and their government, " for a time," by a pontifi- 
cal lay vicar. It is well understood that the unex- 
pected introduction of the Roman question at this 
congress was in pursuance of a private arrange- 
ment between Victor Emanuel and Louis Napo- 
leon; and indeed, when Count de Rayneval, in the 
document from which I have already quoted, an- 
swered the charges against the papal adminis- 
tration, his report was suppressed in France, and 
only saw the light through the enterprise of a daily 
journal in London. The congress refused to con- 
sider the scheme advanced by Count Cavour ; the 
Prussian plenipotentiary complained that the ten- 
dency of the discussion was to provoke in Italy 
" a spirit of opposition and revolutionary agita- 
tion"; and Count Buol afterwards wrote to Ca- 
vour : " The enemies of society will not cease their 
warfare against the legitimate governments of Italy 
so long as they find powers which back and pro- 
tect them, and statesmen who appeal to those pas- 
sions and those efforts which aim at the overthrow 
of all authority." But the mere introduction of 
the Sardinian protocol served the desired purpose. 
" It is the first spark," said Count Cavour's own 
newspaper, " of an irresistible conflagration." " It 
has given a vigorous impulse to agitation," said an- 
other Liberal journal, " and now we have only to 
take care that it does not flag, and to keep it up 



Piedmont and the Pope. 



1 39 



till the decisive day arrives." The speeches of 
ministers in the Sardinian parliament certainly 
helped wonderfully to "keep it up," and to 
strengthen the conviction that whenever the insur- 
gents chose to act they would be supported by the 
Piedmontese troops. " It will be remembered," 
sard the Mazzinian organ L 1 1talia e Pofiolo, " that 
after the memorable parliamentary discussion the 
Sardinian Government, in order to rekindle the fire 
which slumbered in the other provinces of Italy, 
had the speeches of Cavour and BufTa printed and 
disseminated in thousands throughout the duchies, 
the Romagna, Lombardy, Naples, and Sicily. 
Nay, it excited by its emissaries the inhabitants of 
these States ; and the words ' Long live Victor 
Emanuel !' were written on the walls and doors of 
houses at Carrara by Piedmontese agents. Still 
more flattering and more explicit assurances were 
given to the partisans of Piedmontese rule who 
came to Turin." And yet, according to Count 
Cavour, it was the Papacy which disturbed the 
tranquillity of Europe and fomented disorder in 
the centre of Italy ! Well did Louis Napoleon, in 
his message to the French Assembly in 1849, de- 
clare that " the attacks upon the Pope were not 
the movement of a people but the work of a con- 
spiracy." 

On the 14th of January, 1858, Orsini made his 
attempt upon Napoleon's life, and from his prison 
he warned the emperor that the Carbonari held him 
to his ancient engagements. "So long as Italy 



X40 



Life of Pius IX. 



shall not be independent the tranquillity of Europe 
and that of your majesty will be but a chimera." 
From this time there was no more mystery about 
Napoleon's purposes. He had a long private con- 
ference with Cavour at Plombieres, and on the ist 
of January, 1859, he made the famous unfriendly 
remark to the Austrian ambassador at the Tuileries 
which proved the signal for the Franco-Italian war. 
A month later appeared his pamphlet, Napoleon III. 
and Italy, in which he denounced the civil govern- 
ment of the Pope as incompatible with modern 
civilization, and proposed anew the double-headed 
confederation of Gioberti, with the King of Sar- 
dinia as military chief and the Sovereign Pontiff as 
honorary president. It was one of the counts in 
this indictment of the Holy See that the Pope was 
obliged to enforce his authority by the aid of for- 
eign soldiers. Pius replied by a note addressed on 
the 27th of February to France and Austria, thank- 
ing them for their good offices, but requesting them 
to withdraw their troops from the Pontifical States, 
as the papal government was now able to preserve 
order. This, however, did not suit the purposes of 
the French and Sardinian conspiracy. The troops 
remained. 

Piedmont, in the meantime, prepared the revolt 
in all the Italian States. i£ It is my belief," wrote 
the British representative at Florence to his Govern- 
ment, " that the insurrection at Parma was only 
part and parcel of an elaborate Piedmontese con- 
spiracy, aided by the republican party, and having 



Piedmont and the Pope, 



its ramifications throughout every town in Italy." 
Garibaldi, now a general in the Piedmontese ser- 
vice, issued a circular instructing the conspirators 
how to act: a i. As soon as hostilities have com- 
menced between Piedmont and Austria you are to 
rise with the cry of ' Italy for ever! Victor Ema- 
nuel for ever ! ' 2. Wherever the insurrection tri- 
umphs, he among you who enjoys most public 
esteem and confidence is to take the military and 
civil command, with the title of provisional com- 
missioner, acting for King Victor Emanuel, and to 
retain it until the arrival of a commissioner sent by 
the Sardinian Government. " But it is unneces- 
sary to quote proofs of the plot. Mazzini him- 
self laid it bare when he attacked the Government 
on account of its prosecution of the authors of the 
abortive revolt at Genoa, in 1857 : " Monarchico- 
Piedmontese committees exist at Rome, Bologna, 
Florence, and several cities of the Lombardo- Vene- 
tian kingdom, and there are secondary centres in 
several other towns. I could name to you the per- 
sons, several of . them deputies, who are the agents 
between the poor dupes and the personages of the 
Government. " In Florence the plot against the 
Grand Duke of Tuscany, which resulted in his ab- 
dication after his troops had been bribed to desert 
him, was matured in the very house of the Sardi- 
nian ambassador. In Parma the Sardinian agents 
instigated the expulsion of the Duchess Regent, 
who was yet so popular that her subjects spontane- 
ously recalled her, and Victor Emanuel had to 



142 



Life of Pius IX. 



drive her out a second time. In the papal pro- 
vinces the action of Sardinia was still bolder, and 
as fast as the revolutionary disturbances broke out 
the Piedmontese commissioners took possession 
without ceremony. The Marquis Pepoli, who was 
a leader in these transactions, and afterwards one 
of Victor Emanuel's ministers, stated in the Cham- 
ber of Deputies at Turin that the outbreak never 
could have been provoked at Bologna if the king 
had not furnished the money for it from his private 
purse. 

Before the peace of Villafranca a large part of 
Central Italy was in the hands of the Piedmontese 
commissioners. By the terms of that treaty the 
commissioners were to be withdrawn ; and the letter 
of the agreement was, indeed, complied with. Yet 
hardly were the signatures to the convention dry 
when Victor Emanuel was found to be setting up 
a military provisional government over the duchies 
and the legations, and preparing for a fictitious 
plebiscitum on the question of annexation to Pied- 
mont. The affairs of Italy were to have been sub- 
mitted to a European congress, invited to meet at 
Paris early in i860, but on the 226. of December 
appeared a second pamphlet from the Tuileries 
which made the assembling of a congress impos- 
sible. In this manifesto, entitled The Pope and 
the Congress, it was urged that the Holy Father 
should surrender the provinces of the Romagna, 
and content himself with the guarantee of the 
smallest territory consistent with his independence. 



Piedmont and the Popi 



H3 



The publication was anonymous, but nobody 
doubted that it expressed the emperor's sentiments, 
if it was not actually the work of his hand. A 
week later the Official Journal of Rome contained 
a note denouncing it as " a veritable homage to 
revolution " and a subject of grief to all good Ca- 
tholics. " Its arguments are only a repetition of 
errors and outrages many a time directed against 
the Holy See and many a time victoriously re- 
pelled. If the purpose of the author is to intimi- 
date the Holy See, which he threatens with such 
terrible disasters, let him remember that he who 
has right on his side, who rests his cause on the 
solid and immovable foundations of justice, and 
above all is sustained by the protection of the King 
of kings, has certainly nothing to fear from the 
snares of men." On the 1st of January, i860, in 
receiving Gen. G^;on, the commander of the 
French troops at Rome, Pius referred again to this 
pamphlet as " a monument cf hypocrisy and an 
ignoble tissue of contradictions." " We hope/' 
said he, " that with the help of the divine light his 
majesty will condemn the principles set forth in 
this work, and we are the more convinced that he 
will do so because we possess several documents 
which his majesty had the goodness to place in our 
hands some time ago, and which are a direct con- 
tradiction of the principles in question." Monu- 
ments of hypocrisy were, indeed, all the letters 
addressed at this time to the Holy See by the 
courts of the Tuileries and Turin, both protesting 



144 Life of Pius IX. 



the most ardent desire to defend the independence 
which they had been for ten years attacking, 
and the most filial devotion to the interests 
of the Church which they robbed and oppressed. 
Pius replied to them all with dignity and firmness, 
knowing well the afflictions that were in store for 
him, never temporizing, standing brave and majes- 
tic as the one champion of truth and justice in the 
midst of an unfaithful world. "Whatever may 
happen. I must declare openly,"' he wrote to Napo- 
leon, " that I cannot surrender the legations without 
violating the solemn oaths which bind me, without 
producing disorders in the other provinces, without 
committing a wrong and giving scandal to all 
Catholics, without impairing the rights not only of 
the sovereigns of Italy who are unjustly deprived 
of their domains, but also of the sovereigns of the 
entire Christian world, who cannot look with indif- 
ference upon the overthrow of principles. Your 
majesty believes that the repose of Europe depends 
upon the cession by the Pope of the legations 
(which for the past fifty years have been the occa- 
sion of so much embarrassment to the Pontifical 
Government. But, as I promised at the beginning 
of this letter to speak with entire frankness, let me 
return to this argument. "Who can count the revo- 
lutions which have happened in France in the past 
seventy years ? But who would dare say to the 
great French nation that, to secure the repose of 
Europe, it must restrict the limits of the empire ? 
The argument proves too much; you must allow 



Piedmont and the Pope. 



145 



me to reject it. Besides, your majesty is not ig- 
norant by what agents, by whose money, and by 
what support the risings at Bologna, Ravenna, and 
other cities were arranged. . . . We must both ap- 
pear before the Supreme Tribunal to give a strict 
account of our thoughts, words, and deeds. Let 
us try so to appear at the judgment-seat of God 
that we may feel his mercy rather than his justice. 
I address you thus as a father who has the right 
to speak the naked truth to his children, however 
high their position in the world." 

To Victor Emanuel, whose insincerity was so 
flagrant as to be insulting, the language of the Holy 
Father was at once more severe and more tender : 
" Your majesty may read my answer in the ency- 
clical letter which is about to appear. Let me add 
that I profoundly grieve not for myself but for the 
unhappy state of your majesty's soul, burdened as 
you are with so many censures, which, alas! will be 
increased when you and yours shall have consum- 
mated the act ol sacrilege which you are about to 
commit. May the Lord deign to enlighten you 
and yours, and give you the grace to see and deplore 
the scandals and the frightful evils which have af- 
flicted poor Italy with your co-operation!" The 
plebiscitum, nevertheless, was duly carried out, un- 
der the protection of the Sardinian bayonets, with 
an apparatus of fraud, intimidation, and high-hand- 
ed violence which seems incredible in a free coun- 
try. The voting-lists, prepared by the Sardinian 
agents, were restricted to the large towns, where 



146 



Life of Pins IX. 



the Mazzinians and the soldiers ensured a majority 
for the revolution ; and so an apparent demand for 
annexation was carried by a vote of a fraction of 
one per cent, of the population. On the 18th of 
March, i860, the six Papal legations, Bologna, 
Ferrara, Forli, Ravenna, Urbino e Pesaro, and 
Velletri, together with the duchies of Parma, Mo- 
dena, and Tuscany, were declared annexed to 
the Sardinian monarchy. The king communicated 
the news to the Pope in a letter full of expressions 
of respect for religion and unalterable devotion to 
the Catholic faith. The Holy Father replied : " 1 
might say that the pretended vote was forced and 
not voluntary ; I refrain from asking your majes- 
ty's opinion of this sort of universal suffrage, as I 
also refrain from expressing my own. I might 
bring forward many other considerations. But 
what above all compels me to dissent from your 
majesty's views is the spectacle of the steady in- 
crease of immorality in these provinces, and the in- 
sults which are there heaped upon religion and its 
ministers. Moreover, I am not only unable to re- 
gard your majesty's schemes with any favor, but I 
protest against the acts of usurpation committed up- 
on the States of the Church, which leave upon the 
conscience of your majesty and all other co-opera- 
tors in this unworthy spoliation the fatal conse- 
quences that must flow from it. I am persuaded 
that when your majesty reads again, with a calmer 
and less prejudiced mind and a better knowledge 
of the facts, the letter which you have addressed to 



Piedmont and the Pope. 147 

me, you will find in it many reasons for repentance. 
I pray God to give your majesty the graces of 
which you have special need in the difficult cir- 
cumstances of the moment." 

But Pius was not content with these noble per- 
sonal remonstrances. On the 26th of March he 
issued a bull of excommunication against all who 
took part in the " rebellion, usurpation, occupa- 
tion, and criminal invasion " of the States of the 
Church. The French Government, which had sup- 
pressed the Univers for printing the papal encycli- 
cal of January 19, forbade the publication of this 
bull in France. It gave full license to the Liberal 
and official journals to publish a forged bull, and 
to ridicule and denounce its extravagant language ; 
but when the bishops tried to expose the forgery 
the press was closed to them. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



NON POSSUMUS. 

DESERTED or oppressed by all the govern- 
ments of the world, and foreseeing the stormy 
days that were soon to come, Pius preserved the 
calmness and resolution that always adorned his 
saintly life and that appeared more beautiful than 
ever in the darkest days of trouble. A sculptor, 
making a model of his bust, paused to admire the 
noble proportions of his brow. The Pope took the 
chisel and traced these words in the clay : Ecce dedi 
frontem tuam duriorem froniibus eorum — " Behold, I 
have made thy forehead harder than their fore- 
heads." "If the cabinets have their policy," said 
he one day to a visitor who was speaking of the 
difficulties of the situation, " so have I mine." 
" Will your Holiness explain it to me ?" 
" Willingly, my son : ' Our Father who art in 
heaven, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.' 
That is my policy ; I have no other. Be sure it 
will triumph." 

Having lost his revenues by the seizure of the 
legations, he invited the faithful throughout the 
world to contribute to the support of his government 
as well as of the administration of the affairs of the 

universal Church. At once began the extraordinary 

148 



Non Possumus. 149 



collections of " Peter 's pence " which for the past 
eighteen years have so signally illustrated the de- 
votion of the Catholic populations to the Holy See. 
France had given notice that it would soon be 
necessary to withdraw the army of occupation — 
indeed, even without such notice the Sovereign 
Pontiff knew that he could never depend upon 
Louis Napoleon to protect him against revolu- 
tionists or Sardinians — and the formation of a 
defensive force of 20,000 or 25,000 volunteers was 
begun under the gallant French General La Mori- 
ciere, a hero of the Algerian wars, who 4iad always 
refused to serve under the Second Empire. Mon- 
signor de Merode, a Belgian, formerly a soldier, 
and, like La Moriciere, a veteran of Algeria, became 
Minister of War. There was a perfect understand- 
ing between the Holy Father and these two flaming 
and untiring spirits. " See," said Pius, " I am well 
served ! I have for ministers a thunderbolt and a 
hurricane." The volunteers were mostly young 
and ardent Catholics, from France, Spain, Ireland, 
Belgium, Holland — some even from America — who 
felt, as their general did, that the cause of the 
Pope, desperate as it looked to the world, was one 
for which a man might be happy to die. Many of 
them gave their money as well as their persons. 
"The revolution menaces Europe to-day," said 
La Moriciere in taking command of this army, " as 
Islamism menaced it of old ; and to-day, as of old, 
the cause, of the Papacy is the cause of civilization 
and liberty." 



150 Life of Pius IX. 



But Sardinia, having an agreement with Napo- 
leon, was not seriously obstructed by this brave 
little force in her advance towards Rome. The 
next step was the occupation of Umbria and the 
Marches, and this was even a simpler operation 
than the seizure of the legations. The expedition 
was concerted at Chambery between the French 
emperor and the Piedmontese General Cialdini, 
and in closing the interview the emperor is reported 
to have said, Faites, mats faites vite ! — almost the 
very words which our Lord spoke to Judas at the 
Last Supper: " That which thou dost, do quickly." 
Seventy thousand Sardinians immediately marched 
to the papal frontier, and Gen. Fanti sent word to 
La Moriciere, who was disposing his volunteers to 
meet the operations of Garibaldi on the pontifical 
territory, that " if the papal troops used force to 
suppress any rising whatever in the Roman States, 
he would immediately occupy Umbria and the 
Marches." La Moriciere was himself too frank 
and chivalric to realize the mendacity of Napoleon, 
and when the French ambassador solemnly assured 
Cardinal Antonelli that the Piedmontese troops 
would be compelled to respect the boundary line, 
and confine themselves to the suppression of the 
Garibaldians, he believed these representations, in 
spite of what was passing before his eyes. A de- 
spatch from M. de Gramont, the ambassador at 
Rome, confirmed him in this error. " The emperor 
has written from Marseilles to the King of Sar- 
dinia," said this telegram, " that if the Piedmon- 



Non Possumus. 



tese troops enter the pontifical territory, he will 
feel it his duty to oppose them. Reinforcements 
will arrive at once from Toulon. The government 
of the emperor will not tolerate the culpable ag- 
gression of the Sardinian Government.' , The de- 
spatch was submitted to Cialdini, who had al- 
ready begun the march of invasion. He put it in 
his pocket, saying : " I knew about it before you; 
1 have been with the emperor." The messenger 
asked for a receipt. " There," said Cialdini, 
contemptuously signing one, " that will do to go 
with the other diplomatic papers." With 5,600 
volunteers La Moriciere and Pimodan heroically 
confronted the 45,000 troops of Cialdini at Castel- 
fidardo, September 18, i860, the papal soldiers 
beginning the day of battle by receiving the Holy 
Eucharist at dawn. They were defeated with se- 
rious loss. The brave Marquis de Pimodan fell 
during the engagement. La Moriciere, with a 
remnant of his force, made his way to Ancona, and, 
still hoping for the intervention of one or more of 
the Catholic powers, prolonged the defence of that 
city against a combined land and naval attack 
until the 29th. His capitulation at last, when 
resistance was no longer possible, left the Pope 
without an army, and the Sardinians masters of 
everything except the city of Rome and the small 
territory close around its walls. Garibaldi, in the 
meantime, with the secret assistance of the Sardi- 
nian Government, and in the face of a farcical op- 
position from the Sardinian fleet, which carefully 



152 



Life of Pins LX. 



failed in its pretended attempts to intercept him, 
had roused the island of Sicily. Victor Emanuel 
speedily took possession of the whole territory of 
Naples, and in March, 1861, assumed the title of 
king of Italy. The dethroned king of Naples, son 
of the monarch who had so generously entertained 
Pius at Gaeta, fled to Rome, and there found a 
princely reception. Victor Emanuel complained; 
Napoleon half threatened to withdraw his troops 
if the exile were not expelled. But the Pope, re- 
minding the French emperor of the refuge which 
Pius VII. had held open to the family of Napoleon 
L, remarked that it was a tradition with the Roman 
Pontiffs to show hospitality to their persecutors, and 
much more to their benefactors. 

The policy of the emperor became more and 
more open in its hostility to Rome. He forbade 
the Catholics of France to subscribe for a sword 
of honor for La Moriciere ; he deprived the French 
volunteers of their citizenship as a punishment for 
serving the Pope. He summoned home Gen. 
Goyon, the commander of the French troops at 
Rome, because he was too stanch a friend of the 
Sovereign Pontiff. The general did not understand 
the motive of these orders. " I am called to 
France, Holy Father," said he, in taking leave; 
"not ^called." " Go, my son," was the reply; 
"you will find the re at Paris." The Pope was 
right. In September, 1864, Napoleon signed a 
convention with Victor Emanuel, by which it was 
agreed that the French army should evacuate 



Non Possumus. 



153 



Rome within two years, and that the Pope should 
be secured in the possession of the territory which 
he then occupied, the Government at Turin binding 
itself neither to invade that little State nor to allow 
it to be invaded by others. The Italian capital 
was to be removed from Turin to Florence. But 
the Piedmontese Government never had an idea of 
keeping long to the terms of the convention, and 
the very statesmen who put their names to it de- 
clared that it would in no wise hinder their designs 
upon Rome. The Pope was not consulted in this 
arrangement of his future and parcelling out of his 
property. When he heard of it he said : " I pity 
France." Doubtless he saw the true meaning of 
the convention, just as did the Marquis Pepoli, who 
was one of Victor Emanuel's plenipotentiaries in 
the negotiation. " It breaks the last link," said the 
marquis, " which connects France with our ene- 
mies " — the enemies being the Holy See and the 
Catholic religion. 

The magnificent firmness, the holy courage of 
Pius IX. were never grander than in these critical 
days. Denouncing the iniquities of the new Ita- 
lian kingdom, the spoliation of churches, the sup- 
pression of convents, the abolition of seminaries 
and pious schools, the license of an immoral press, 
or exposing the tricks and falsehoods of the French 
emperor, or castigating the czar for his atrocious 
persecution of the Poles, or waging ceaseless war 
upon the atheistic revolution, he was indeed " every 
inch a pope." " Rome is a city of wonders," said 



154 



Life of Pius IX. 



a French bishop, " but the wonder of Rome is Pius 
IX." To the French Government, which had urged 
him to come to an understanding with the Italians, 
he replied through Cardinal Antonelli : 

" It is not true that there is discord between the 
Sovereign Pontiff and Italy. If the Holy Father has 
broken with the cabinet of Turin, he maintains an excel- 
lent understanding, nevertheless, with Italy. An Italian 
himself, and the first cf Italians, he suffers in her suffer- 
ings, and shares in ihe cruel trials which afflict the Ita- 
lian Church. 

"As for agreeing with the despoilers, we will never do 
it. I can only repeat that any transaction on that basis 
is impossible. With whatever reserves it might be accom- 
panied, with whatever adroitness of phrase it might be 
disguised, the moment we accepted we should appear to 
sanction it. The Sovereign Pontiff before his exaltation, 
and the cardinals at the time of their nomination, bind 
themselves by oath not to yield up any part of the terri- 
tory of the Church. The Holy Father, therefore, will 
make no concession of this nature ; a conclave would 
have no right to do it ; a new Pontiff could not do it ; his 
successors, from generation to generation, would be 
equally unable to do it." 

And a little later he said to the same faithless 
adviser at the Tuileries : 

"The Holy Father can consent to nothing which di- 
rectly or indirectly sanctions in any manner whatever 
the spoliations of which he has been the victim. He 
cannot aMenate, either directly or indirectly, any parcel 
of the territory which constitutes the property of the 
Church and of all Catholicity. His conscience forbids ; 
and he is resolved to keep it pure before God and before 
man." 



Non Possumns. 



Here was the famous answer No?i possumus, 
which became a byword and a symbol of the un- 
conquerable opposition between the everlasting 
principles of God's Church and the evil tendencies 
of modern society. It had been still more plainly 
stated, perhaps, in the allocution Jamdiidum cer- 
nimus of March 18, 1861 : 

" For a long time, venerable brothers, we have wit- 
nessed a lamentable straggle, begotten of the irreconcila- 
ble antagonism between truth and falsehood, virtue and 
vice, light and darkness, which, in our time, disturbs 
and convulses society. Some maintain what they call 
the ideas of modern civilization ; others defend the 
cause of justice and of our hoi}/ religion. The former 
call upon the Roman Pontiff to reconcile and ally him- 
self to what they call 1 progress' and 'liberalism' and 
the new civilization. They profess to be true and sin- 
cere friends of religion ; we would gladly believe them, 
but the sad events which daily occur under the eyes of 
all men bear witness to the contrary. And as for those 
who invite us for the good of religion to join hands with 
modern civilization, we ask them how it is possible for 
him whom Christ has made his vicar on earth, and 
charged to keep his heavenly doctrine pure and to feed 
and strengthen his flock, to ally himself in good con- 
science and without scandal with that modern civiliza- 
tion wh ; ch begets such lamentable evils, such abomina- 
ble opinions, so many errors and doctrines opposed to 
the Catholic religion and its teachings? 

" This modern civilization favors every form of wor- 
ship that is not Catholic, while it denounces reli- 
gious communities, pious congregations for the direction 
of Catholic education, ecclesiastics of every rank, even 
the highest, many of whom are now imprisoned or ban- 



156 



Life of Pius IX. 



ished, and illustrious laymen who, in their devotion to 
our person and to the Holy See, have zealously defended 
the cause of religion and justice. This civilization is 
prodigal of support to non-Catholic institutions and per- 
sons, while it strips the Catholic Church of her lawful 
property, and labors incessantly to destroy her whole- 
some influence. It gives full liberty to those who, by 
speech or writing, attack the Church and her defenders ; 
it inspires and fosters unbridled license ; and while it is 
lenient towards those who assail virtuous books, it is 
harsh in its treatment of religious writers, and pursues 
them with the utmost rigor if they chance to transgress 
in the slightest degree the bounds of moderation. 

"Is it possible for the Sovereign Pontiff to become 
the friend and ally of such a civilization as this? Let us 
call things again by their right names, and it will be 
seen that this Holy See is always consistent with itself. 
It has always been the patron and the nurse of true civi- 
lization. But with a pretended civilization which aims 
at weakening and even destroying the Church of Christ, 
never, certainly, can the Holy See and the Roman Pon- 
tiff com 2 to an agreement. 'For what participation/ 
cries the Apostle, ' hath justice with injustice ? Or what 
fellowship hath light with darkness ? And what concord 
hath Christ with Belial ? ' " 

After briefly reviewing the course of the revolu- 
tion in the Roman States, and the persecution 
of the Church which invariably followed the Pied- 
montese occupation, he continued : 

" After they have thus insulted the religion which they 
hypocritically invite to reconcile itself with modern civi- 
lization, they do not hesitate, with equal hypocrisy, to 
urge us to reconcile ourselves with Pal}-. That is to 
say, after we have been stripped of nearly our whole 



Non Possnmus. 



157 



principality, and compelled to meet the heavy cost of 
the temporal and spiritual government by the generous 
offering of our pious and loving children ; after we have 
been made without any cause the object of the hate and 
malice of the very men who demand this reconciliation, 
they ask us, besides, to yield formally to the despoilers 
the title to the property which they have usurped. By 
which audacious and unheard-of demand they ask the 
Apostolic See, which alwaj^s has been and always will 
be the bulwark of truth and justice, to sanction the 
peaceable possession by an unjust aggressor of pro- 
perty which he has acquired by wicked violence, and to 
establish the false principle that a successful wrong is 
no infringement of the sanctity of right." 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE TEACHER OF THE WORLD. 

IT was in the heat of the warfare against the 
temporal power, and of attempts in France, 
in Italy, in Germany, in Spanish America, in vari- 
ous other countries of the Old World and the New, 
to undermine the authority of the Holy See, to 
separate the bishops from their head, and destroy 
the attachment of Catholic peoples for the centre 
of Catholic life, that Pius IX. called forth the most 
signal demonstrations of the perfect unity of the 
episcopate, and made the most memorable asser- 
tions of the supreme teaching power of the vicar of 
Christ. Striking as had been the manifestation of 
the Catholicity of the Church on the occasion of 
the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate 
Conception, there was a still more remarkable 
gathering in Rome in May and June, 1862, when, 
at the invitation of the Holy Father, an enormous 
multitude of bishops, priests, and pilgrims from the 
four quarters of the earth came together at St. Pe- 
ter's for the canonization of twenty-six missionaries 
crucified more than two and a half centuries ago in 
Japan. Two hundred and sixty-five cardinals, pa- 
triarchs, archbishops, and bishops, four thousand 
158 



The Teacher of the World. 159 



priests, and a hundred thousand lay visitors are 
said to have witnessed the solemnities, and nearly 
eighty bishops of Italy protested against the vio- 
lence of the Italian Government, which would not 
permit them to join the throng. Traversing the 
crowded streets from one sanctuary to another, 
answering the cheers which rose from devout and 
excited multitudes as he passed among them, re- 
ceiving deputations with his unfailing benig- 
nity, borne aloft across the splendid basilica and 
blessing the close ranks which knelt before him, 
presiding over magnificent ceremonies, address- 
ing the bishops and clergy, Pius IX. was the ra- 
diant centre of a grand religious movement which 
inflamed the imagination of even the sceptical and 
profoundly stirred every faithful heart. From As- 
cension to Pentecost Rome was filled with the 
splendor of a festival. On the 6th of June the 
Pope preached, in Latin and French, to four thou- 
sand priests, who completely filled the Sistine 
Chapel. After the benediction one of the listeners, 
on the impulse of the moment, intoned the prayer 
for the Pope, Oremus pro Pontifice nostro Pio, and 
three times the whole assembly, as if with one 
voice, responded with the invocation. The formali- 
ties of the canonization were celebrated in St.. Pe- 
ter's on the feast of Pentecost, June 8, and the 
next day the Holy Father delivered an allocution 
to the Sacred College in the presence of all the bi- 
shops then at Rome. He denounced the prevalent 
errors of the day — errors in religion, errors in philo- 



i6o 



Life of Pius IX. 



sophy, errors in politics ; he censured the license of 
the anti-Christian press; he exhorted the guardians 
of Christ's flock to watch carefully over the training 
of the young. But the most significant document of 
all the prolonged solemnities was an address to the 
Holy Father read by the dean of the Sacred Col- 
lege on the 8th of June, and signed by all the bish- 
ops in Rome, both of the Latin, Greek, and Oriental 
rites. It expressed in unmistakable terms the be- 
lief of the entire episcopate in the plenitude of the 
Pontiffs teaching authority : " For you are to us 
the teacher of sound doctrine, the centre of unity, 
the unfailing light to the nations, kindled by divine 
wisdom. You are the Rock, the foundation of the 
Church, against which the gates of hell shall not 
prevail. When you speak we hear Peter's voice ; 
when you decide we obey the authority of Christ.'' 
It declared the sense of the whole Church to be 
that the temporal power was necessary to the Su- 
preme Pontiff's, and an institution of providential 
origin. Finally, it proclaimed in eloquent terms 
the close union of faith and sympathy between the 
universal Church and the holy Roman See. " We 
condemn the errors which you have condemned ; 
we detest the new and strange doctrines which are 
taught to the injury of the Church of Jesus Christ; 
we denounce and condemn the sacrileges, spolia- 
tions, violations of ecclesiastical immunities, and 
other outrages which have been committed against 
the Church and the See of Peter." 

We have seen how Pius IX. combated the at- 



The Teacher of the World. 161 



tempts of unfaithful Catholic governments to build 
up national churches within their respective terri- 
tories and make them the servants of the civil 
power. The tyranny of a schismatic government 
over its Catholic subjects aroused no less his in- 
dignant resistance. A rising in unhappy Poland, 
provoked by the intolerable harshness of the Rus- 
sian Government, was followed by redoubled cruel- 
ties. Identifying the religious sentiment with the 
sentiment of Polish nationality, the czar undertook 
to crush the Catholic faith throughout the king- 
dom. The churches were closed, the bishops were 
imprisoned or exiled, hundreds of priests were 
transported to Siberia, and families were compelled 
to choose between apostasy and banishment. The 
Holy Father remonstrated with the czar in the 
most eloquent and sympathetic language, and, fail- 
ing in these representations, he sent a special envoy 
to Vienna to beg the intervention of the Austrian 
emperor. His tender heart seemed breaking with 
sorrow when he heard the sad story of the Polish 
martyrs; his holy anger was like a consuming fire 
when he hurledjiis reproaches at their persecutors. 
He ordered public prayers for Poland, and he took 
part personally in an extra or cfmary devotional sol- 
emnity, when a vast multitude of the Roman peo- 
ple, moved by his ringing voice, knelt with him at 
the basilica of St. Mary Major to beg the divine 
interposition. " The blood of the weak and the 
innocent," exclaimed he, in an address delivered 
at the Propaganda in April, 1864, " cries to the 



Life of Pius IX, 



throne of the Eternal for ^ngeance against those 
who spill it. This potentate, who falsely calls him- 
self an Oriental Catholic, whereas he is only a 
schismatic rejected from the bosom of the true 
Church — this potentate persecutes and kills his Ca- 
tholic subjects and drives them to revolt by his fe- 
rocious cruelty. Under pretext of repressing this 
insurrection he is extirpating Catholicism; he is 
transporting whole populations to frozen regions 
where they are deprived of all religious succor, and 
he is replacing them with schismatical adventurers. 
He is tearing the priests from their flocks, and send- 
ing them into exile, -or condemning them to penal 
servitude and other infamous punishments. Hap- 
py are those who have been able to flee, and who 
now wander homeless in a strange land ! This po- 
tentate, heterodox and schismatic as he is, arro- 
gates to himself a power which even the vicar of 
Jesus Christ does not possess ; for he presumes to 
depose a bishop whom we have instituted. Insen- 
sate man ! He does not know that a Catholic bish- 
op, in his see or in the catacombs, is always the same, 
and that his character is indelible. And let no 
one say that in lifting up our voice against such 
transactions we are fomenting the European revo- 
lution. We know how to distinguish between the 
socialist revolution and the legitimate rights of a 
nation struggling for its independence and its reli- 
gious faith." The apostolic courage of this re- 
buke to a mighty empire, made at a moment when 
the revolution was fast closing around the papal 



The Teacher of the World. 163 



throne, and all the powers of Europe were either 
in league against it or indifferent to its fate, extort- 
ed a cry of admiration even from the enemies of 
the Papacy. Sig. Brofferio exclaimed in the Cham- 
ber of Deputies at Turin, amidst the applause of 
the radical members : " What a spectacle is that 
old man, worn, sick, without resources, without an 
army, on the edge of the grave, cursing a poten- 
tate who slays a people ! It stirs me to the very 
depth of my being ; I fancy myself carried back to 
the days of Gregory VII. ; I bow my head and ap- 
p^ud !" 

Some time afterward Pius gave audience to the 
Russian charge d'affaires, M. de Meyendorf, and 
spoke to him about the unhappy condition of 
Poland. M. de Meyendorf denied everything, 
even the most notorious facts, and declared, more- 
over, that the Catholics were everywhere accom- 
plices with the rebels. "There is nothing aston- 
ishing in that," he added ; " Catholicism and revo- 
lution are the same thing." 

" Begone !" exclaimed Pius. " I must believe, 
monsieur, that the emperor, your master, is ignorant 
of the greater part of the wrongs under which 
Poland suffers ; I honor and esteem your emperor, 
therefore; but I cannot say as much for his rep- 
resentative who comes to insult me in my own 
palace." The persecution has not ceased to this 
day. 

Encouraging and consoling the Polish bishops, 
and instructing them as to their conduct in these 



164 



Life of Phis IX. 



trying circumstances; correcting the dangerous 
tendencies of a party of Catholic theologians at 
Munich; gently rebuking the over-moderate policy 
of the illustrious Archbishop of Paris ; addressing 
to the Bishop of Fribourg a memorable letter on 
the paramount necessity of religious education ; 
censuring the spoliation of church property in 
Mexico, alike by Juarez and by Maximilian; send- 
ing missionaries into Dahomey, and hastening to 
gather the first converts in the newly-opened 
empire of Japan; always cheering and guiding the 
long-suffering bishops of Italy — this extraordinary 
Pope was literally the teacher of the whole world. 
His activity had no parallel, and seemed to be 
broken by no repose. 

It was at the close of the year 1864, just after 
France and Italy by the convention of Turin had 
divided his estate between them and made a more 
formal declaration than ever of the exclusion of 
religion from the sphere of civil society, that Pius 
published his great declaration of Catholic doctrine 
w 7 ith respect to the politico-ecclesiastical controver- 
sies of the time, which will always be reckoned 
among the chief works of his pontificate. Certainly, 
if there is an irreconcilable conflict between the 
Church and the world, it is no less important to one 
side than to the other that the line of division 
should be marked with the utmost clearness. All 
the points in controversy had been covered from 
time to time by Pius himself and his immediate pre- 
decessor ; but even Catholic writers here and there 



The Teacher of the World. 165 

seemed to have forgotten the true spirit of Catho- 
lic teaching, and to have been captivated by the 
specious phrases which a false liberalism has im- 
posed upon mankind in lieu of philosophical prin- 
ciples. Hence the encyclical Quanta cura of De- 
cember 8, 1864, with the accompanying index, or 
Syllabus, of condemned propositions. It taught no 
new doctrine, but it brought together in one com- 
prehensive letter of censure a whole catalogue of 
errors against which the Pontiff had been protest- 
ing ever since he came to the throne. Treating 
first of the relations between the Church and the 
state, the encyclical reminds the bishops that the 
principle of " naturalism " in politics, which makes 
no account of religion in the regulation of civil 
society, is contrary to Catholic doctrine; the mo- 
dern idea that the best government is one which 
treats true and false creeds alike, and leaves to all 
men not only complete liberty of conscience and 
worship but the unrestricted privilege of propagat- 
ing whatever opinions they please, is. a dangerous 
error ; " the will of the people " does not consti- 
tute a supreme law independent of all divine and 
human right ; " accomplished facts," by the mere 
circumstance of their being accomplished, have 
not the force of right ; and human society, released 
from the ties of religion and justice, has no other 
sanction than material force, no other aim than 
selfish interests. Separated from civil society, re- 
ligion will next be abolished in the family and in 
private life ; thus already the communistic doctrine 



Life of Pius IX. 



is taught that domestic society derives its reason 
of existence from the civil law, and the state con- 
sequently arrogates to itself the right to define the 
parental authority and to control the education of 
the young ; and to this false principle are traceable 
the incessant efforts of the party of disorder to 
remove children from the influence of the Church 
and drive the clergy from the schools. Treating 
more particularly of conflicts, actual or possible, 
between the civil and ecclesiastical law, the ency- 
clical declares that the authority of the Church is 
not subordinate to the civil authority ; that its 
decrees do not require the sanction of the civil 
power ; that it is entirely independent of the secu- 
lar authority ; that it may extend to secular con- 
cerns, and its scope is not confined to dogmas of 
faith and morals, but binds the conscience even 
when it refers to other matters connected with the 
general welfare of the Church. In the Syllabus 
the various errors against which the encyclical 
is directed will be found still more exactly defined. 
Eighty condemned propositions are enumerated, 
and classified under ten heads, namely : i. Pan- 
theism, naturalism, and absolute rationalism. 2. 
Moderate rationalism. 3. IndifFerentism and 
latitudinarianism. 4. Socialism, communism, se- 
cret societies, Biblical societies, and clerico-liberal 
societies. 5. Errors concerning the Church and 
her rights. 6. Errors concerning civil society con- 
sidered both in itself and in its relation to the 
Church. 7. Errors concerning natural and Chris- 



The Teacher of the World. 167 



tian ethics. 8. Errors concerning Christian mar- 
riage. 9. Errors concerning the civil power of the 
Sovereign Pontiff. 10. Errors concerning modern 
liberalism. Many of the " errors of our time " 
censured in this catalogue are abstract doctrines ; 
but the greater part concern Christian morals and 
the relations between Church and state, and not a 
few will be found formally set forth in the acts of 
the Italian Government and other European powers 
which nevertheless profess to be Catholic. This is 
not the place to discuss the teachings of the ency- 
clical, but it may not be amiss to quote a few of 
the propositions which provoked the bitterest criti- 
cism from the an ti- Catholic world, and gave rise to 
the cry that Pius IX. had set himself against the 
course of modern civilization and enlightenment. 
Here, then, are some of the popular errors which 
the Syllabus condemns : 

" 23. Roman Pontiffs and oecumenical councils have 
wandered outside the limits of their powers, have usurp- 
ed the rights of princes, and have even erred in defining 
matters of faith and morals. 

" 24. The Church has not the power of using force ; 
nor has she any temporal power, direct or indirect. 

"27. The Roman Pontiff and the sacred ministers of 
the Church are to be absolutely excluded from every 
charge and dominion over temporal affairs. 

"30. The immunity of the Church and of ecclesiasti- 
cal persons derived its origin from civil law. 

"42. In the case of conflicting laws enacted by the 
two powers the civil law prevails. 

"45. The entire government of public schools . . , 
ought to appertain to the civil power. , . . 



i68 



Life of Pins IX. 



"48. Catholics may approve of a system of educating 
youth unconnected with Catholic faith and the power of 
the Church, and which regards the knowledge of merely 
natural things, and only, or at least primarily, the ends 
of earthly social life. 

" 55. The Church ought to be separated from the state, 
and the state from the Church. 

"63. It is lawful to refuse obedience to legitimate 
princes, and even to rebel against them. 

" 67. By the law of nature the marriage tie is not in- 
dissoluble, and in many cases divorce properly so-called 
may be decreed by the civil authority. 

" 74. Matrimonial causes and espousals belong by 
their nature to civil tribunals. 

" 76. The abolition of the temporal power of which 
the Apostolic See is possessed would contribute in the 
greatest degree to the liberty and prosperity of the 
Church. 

" 77. In the present day it is no longer expedient that 
the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion 
of the state, to the exclusion of all other forms of wor- 
ship. 

" 80. The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile 
himself and come to terms with progress, liberalism, and 
modern civilization." 

If there is ever to be a re-establishment of true 
Christian society, Pius IX. has traced out the foun- 
dations upon which it must rest. The world was 
filled with rage at these declarations, but the world 
and the Church are at war, and it was a grand deed 
to demonstrate that in this conflict the Church 
stands exactly where she has stood from the be- 
ginning and will stand to the end. There are few 
more magnificent examples of fortitude in all his- 



The Teacher of the World, 169 



tory than the spectacle of the aged and persecuted 
Pontiff who will neither compromise, nor tempo- 
rize, nor even be silent, but only lifts his standard 
higher as his enemies press around him. A Pro- 
testant writer (Mr. Trollope), whose remarks are 
not always fair or true, or even decent, says of the 
publication of the encyclical and Syllabus: "In 
doing this Pius has placed himself on his true 
ground. We may meet him on it. We may take 
part with the world, and fight him and his, inch by 
inch; but we. cannot insist that he has no locus 
standi. We must, if we take our stand with the 
world against the Church, do so avowedly and 
knowingly. Pius IX. has done a great thing ! He 
has brought his generation unmistakably to the 
forking of the ways. He could not be let to be a 
great king, so he determined to be a great Pope ; 
and he has become a greater Pope than almost 
any one of his predecessors." 



CHAPTER XV. 



THE CENTENARY OF PETER. 

N the 6th of December, 1866, the French 



V^/ troops were entirely withdrawn from Rome, 
in accordance with the pledges of the Turin con- 
vention, and a papal army of 12,000 volunteers, 
recruited, like the gallant force under La Moriciere, 
from all the Catholic countries, and supported in 
great part by the special contributions of their 
countrymen, undertook the defence of the small 
remnant of the Roman territory. La Moriciere 
was no longer living. General Kanzler, who had 
succeeded Monsignor de Merode as Minister of 
War, was commander-in-chief. In taking leave of 
the French officers the Pope said: "We must not 
deceive ourselves. The revolution will come to 
Rome. We shall see the end here. Go, my sons, 
with my benediction and my love. If you see the 
emperor, tell him that I pray for him every day. 
They say that his health is not very good; I pray 
for his health. They say that his soul is not 
tranquil ; I pray for his soul. The French nation 
is Christian ; its chief ought to be Christian, too." 
To his personal friends he said: " Yes, it is God 




The Centenary of Peter. 171 

who sustains his vicar. I was driven away once, 
and I came back. If I am driven away again I 
shall come back. And if I die — well, if I die 
Peter will rise again." 

The Garibaldians, openly assisted as before by 
the Italian Government, hardly waited for the re- 
tirement of the French garrison before they invaded 
the papal territory, and Victor Emanuel paid no 
more regard to the engagements of the Turin con- 
vention than if they had been made in jest. This 
was more than public opinion in France would 
tolerate. A French force under Gen. de Failly 
was sent to Rome to co-operate with Gen. Kanzler; 
and after several minor engagements Garibaldi was 
signally defeated at Mentana Nov. 3, 1867, leaving 
a number of his men in the hands of the victors. 
Fighting under no recognized flag, and repudiated 
by the mendacious Government at Florence, these 
captives were of course not entitled to be treated 
as prisoners of war; but the benevolent Pontiff, 
after visiting the wounded and supplying them with 
clothing, dismissed them all. The secret societies 
within the city of Rome had endeavored to co- 
operate with the invaders, and as a preliminary to 
the seizure of the military posts they undermined 
and blew up one of the barracks. There were no 
soldiers in it at the time, but the musicians of the 
Zouave corps were there practising, and they lost 
their lives by the explosion. Two of the authors 
of this atrocious deed were arrested, tried by the 
civil courts, and executed. 



172 



Life of Pius LX. 



The moment the Garibaldians crossed the fron- 
tier, and even before there had been any serious 
passage of arms, Count Giraud, one of the muni- 
cipal councillors of Rome, accompanied by three 
of his colleagues, all Liberals like himself, waited 
upon the Pope and asked leave to present a peti- 
tion which the municipal council had been charged 
to submit to the Vatican. It was a request that His 
Holiness would invite Victor Emanuel to occupy 
Rome with an army, in order to maintain order, 
and it professed to be supported by the signatures 
of 12,000 Roman citizens. Pius, having received 
the deputation and read the petition, asked for the 
roll of signatures. The count was disconcerted, 
and at last acknowledged that the petition was 
anonymous, and had been given to him by a porter, 
who had received it in the street from an unknown 
gentleman. The 12,000 Roman citizens had no 
existence in the flesh. The Pope dismissed the 
abashed deputation, and said to those around him : 
" I shall not open the gates of Rome to the troops 
of Victor Emanuel any more than to the troops of 
Garibaldi ; and those who enter will enter by vio- 
lence. If they are the royal troops who seize upon 
my capital I shall quit the city ; but if they are the 
Garibaldians I shall remain to share with my clergy 
the martyrdom which awaits us." 

It was in the midst of m titterings of revolution 
and threats of exile that Pius summoned around 
his throne, for the third time, a mighty assemblage 
of the bishops of the world. Two days after the 



The Centenary of Peter, 173 
✓ 

departure of the French garrison, when he found 
himself almost defenceless, face to face with the 
enemy which had been pressing upon him for 
twenty years, he issued the letters of invitation 
which called the whole episcopate to Rome for the 
celebration of the eighteenth centenary of the 
martyrdom of St. Peter. The anniversary fell in 
June, 1867. To human judgment it appeared in 
the highest degree improbable that a concourse of 
bishops would be allowed to meet at the tomb of 
the apostle in June, 1867, and doubtful whether 
the Pope himself would be in Rome. But to the 
sublime faith of Pius IX. no difficulties seemed 
alarming. At the appointed time such a spectacle 
was witnessed in the capital of Christendom as the 
world had never seen before. Five hundred and 
twelve bishops, twenty thousand priests, and one 
hundred and twenty thousand other persons flocked 
to Rome for this extraordinary solemnity. The 
population of the city was doubled. Pilgrims from 
the four quarters of the earth brought rich offer- 
ings. The signatures to addresses counted by mil- 
lions. The Italians, who were said to be hostile to 
the Papacy, were no less enthusiastic than other 
nations in commemorating the first Pope and 
honoring his living successor. A hundred cities of 
Italy united in presenting an enormous album and 
a hundred purses of gold. Fifty thousand Italians 
from various parts of the peninsula are said to have 
joined the universal pilgrimage. America and the 
Indies sent their thousands. " The patriarchs and 



174 



Life of Pius IX. 



bishops of the East who surrounded Pius IX.," said 
Cardinal Manning, " brought to my mind the first- 
fruits of the nations who came up to Bethlehem. 
There were some who had travelled forty days — 
one who had travelled longer still — before they 
could reach an ordinary road. When I saw them 
surround the vicar of our Lord and kiss his feet, 
almost by force, I prayed God that the day might 
be hastened when the sun shall arise upon Asia re- 
stored to the unity of the only fold." Eighty-live 
of the poorest of the bishops were lodged and enter- 
tained at the Pope's expense, and not one of these 
needy prelates was dismissed without a handsome 
present for his diocese. 

For three weeks Rome was filled with the aroma 
of piety, the flame of religious ardor, and the 
splendor of stately ceremonial. So grand a mani- 
festation of the universality of the Church, so impres- 
sive an evidence of the union between the bishops 
and their chief, will long be chronicled in sacred 
history as one of the momentous events of our 
stirring time. The 17th of June was the anniver- 
sary of the Pope's creation. After the Mass in 
the Sistine the Holy Father went to unvest in the 
Pauline Chapel, and there the cardinal-vicar, in 
the name of the Sacred College, made the usual 
address of congratulation, wishing his Holiness 
"health and many years to see the peace and 
triumph of the Church." The beautiful and touch- 
ing language in which Pius replied is said to have 
stirred the heart of every one present : " I accept 



The Centenary of Peter. 175 

your good wishes," said he, " from my heart, but I 
remit their verification to the hands of God. We 
are in a moment of great crisis. If we look only 
to the aspect of human events, there is no hope ; 
but we have a higher confidence. Men are intoxi- 
cated with dreams of unity and progress ; but 
neither is possible without justice. Unity and 
progress based on pride and egotism are illusions. 
God has laid on me the duty to declare the truths 
on which Christian society is based, and to con- 
demn the errors which undermine its foundations. 
And I have not been silent. In the encyclical of 
1864, and in that which is called the Syllabus, I 
declared to the world the dangers which threaten 
society, and I condemned the falsehoods which 
assail its life. That act I now confirm in your 
presence, and I set it again before you as the rule 
of your teaching. To you, venerable brethren, as 
bishops of the Church, I now appeal to assist me in 
this conflict with error. On you I rely for support. 
When the people of Israel wandered in the wilder- 
ness they had a pillar of fire to guide them in the 
night, and a cloud to shield them from the heat by 
day. You are the pillar and the cloud to the 
people of God. By your teaching you must guide 
the faithful in the darkness ; by your example you 
must shield them from the burning sun of this 
world. I am aged and alone, praying on the 
mountain ; and you, the bishops of the Church, are 
come to hold up my arms. The Church must suf- 
fer, but it will conquer. 4 Preach the word ; be 



176 Life of Pius IX. 

instant in season, out of season ; reprove, entreat, 
rebuke with all patience and doctrine. For there 
shall be a time ' — and that time is come — ' when 
they will not endure sound doctrine.' The world 
will contradict you and turn from you; but be 
firm and faithful. ' For I am even now ready to 
be sacrificed, and the time of my dissolution is at 
hand.' I have, I trust, fought a good fight, and 
have kept the faith ; and there is laid up for you, and 
I hope for me also, 6 a crown of justice which the 
Lord, the just judge, will render to me at that 
day ! ' " 

The 20th of June was the feast of Corpus Chris- 
ti \ as the Supreme Pontiff knelt on that day with 
the Blessed Sacrament in his hands, praying silently 
in the midst of the silent multitude, with half the 
bishops of the universe around him, an eye-witness 
of the ceremony relates that a calm so profound 
fell upon the immense gathering that one seemed 
to be alone in the stillness of the desert. On the 
24th, when the Pope visited the Lateran basilica, a 
vast crowd in the great square before the church 
rent the air with, acclamations so long and hearty 
that the Holy Father, no stranger certainly to 
marks of popular affection, was moved to tears. 
The papal carriage, surrounded by an excited po- 
pulace cheering, waving handkerchiefs, and scat- 
tering flowers, was for some time unable to move, 
and the demonstrations lasted all through the 
journey of three miles from the Lateran to St. 
Peter's. It is related that by the time the Pope 



The Centenary of Peter. 177 



reached the Vatican his white cloak was torn 
almost to shreds by relic-hunters. 

On the 26th was held a consistory in the tribune 
over the atrium of St. Peter's, and there Pius made 
the first public announcement of his intention to 
summon an oecumenical council. On the eve of 
the Centenary the Pope sang Vespers with great 
solemnity in St. Peter's. At night the city was 
illuminated. The pontifical Mass, on the feast 
itself (June 29), was celebrated by the Holy Fa- 
ther at the high altar of St. Peter's, over the apos- 
tle's tomb, and after the gospel he preached a 
sermon to the five hundred bishops and the innu- 
merable multitude of the faithful who filled the 
basilica. " The splendor and beauty of that cere- 
mony," says Cardinal Manning, " was probably 
never equalled. It was royal and pontifical in all 
the fulness of majestic grandeur." The episcopal 
chair of St. Peter, which is enclosed within a bronze 
throne designed by Bernino and placed above the 
altar in the apse of the church, was exposed to 
view for the first time in two hundred years. 
Other incidents of the prolonged commemoration 
were the celebration of the feast of St. Paul in the 
gorgeous basilica outside the walls 5 the consecra- 
tion of the church of St. Mary of the Angels; and, 
lastly, on the 1st of July the reception of the bishops, 
who presented a reply to the allocution. " When 
the address had been read," says Cardinal Man- 
ning, " and when the Holy Father was about to 
bestow the apostolical benediction and bid farewell 



i 7 8 



Life of Phis IX. 



to the bishops, the Angelus of noon sounded. He 
rose and began the Angelical Salutation, half the 
bishops of the world responding. Such a salutation 
was perhaps never before offered to the Mother of 
God on earth. At Ephesus there were four hun- 
dred and thirty bishops, but the Vicar of her di- 
vine Son was not there. So, simply and grandly, 
ended the Centenary of 1867. " 

The announcement of the coming council was a 
great surprise to nearly all those present at the 
Centenary, and it was received with unbounded 
satisfaction. Although it was certainly not the 
purpose of the Sovereign Pontiff to obtain from this 
oecumenical gathering a definition of any one par- 
ticular doctrine, the dogmatic declaration of Papal 
Infallibility, which the events of the past ten or 
twelve years had been forcing more and more upon 
the attention of the episcopate, was at . once made 
a subject of discussion, and most theologians pro- 
bably saw that it must logically follow from the 
assembling of the council. After the allocution of 
the 26th of June a general meeting of the bishops 
was held at the Altieri Palace to draw up the ad- 
dress of reply. The task was delegated to a com- 
mittee of seven, consisting of Cardinal de Ange- 
lis, the Archbishops of Saragossa, Sorrento, and 
Kalocsa, Monsignor (now Cardinal) Franchi, Dr. 
Manning, and Bishop Dupanloup. Dr. Manning 
relates that in the original draft of the address the 
word " infallible " was in more places than one 
ascribed to the office and authority of the Pontiff. 



The Centenary of Peter. 179 



To this word, as expressing a doctrine of Catholic 
truth, no member of the commission objected. It 
was urged, however, that the term had never yet 
been applied to the Pope in the formal acts of any 
general council, and, as the five hundred bishops 
then assembled in Rome did not constitute a coun- 
cil, it might be advisable not to forestall the future 
action of the episcopate by adopting any language 
not already sanctioned by the authoritative decla- 
rations of the Church, The address was restricted, 
therefore, to the expressions used by the Council of 
Florence (1439). How plainly it implied the doc- 
trine of infallibility and foreshadowed the definition 
of 1870 will be seen from the following extract : 

" Five years ago we rendered our due testimony to 
the sublime office you bear, and gave public expression 
to our prayers for you, for your civil princedom, and the 
cause of right and of religion. We then professed, both in 
words and writing, that nothing was more true or dearer 
to us than to believe and teach those things which you 
believe and teach, than to reject those errors which you 
reject. All those things which we then declared we now 
renew and confirm, Never has your voice been silent. 
You have accounted it to belong to your supreme office 
to proclaim eternal verities, to smite the errors of the 
time which threaten to overthrow the natural and super- 
natural order of things and the very foundations of 
ecclesiastical and civil power ; so that at length all 
may know what it is that every Catholic should hold, 
retain, and profess. Believing that Peter has spoken by 
the mouth of Pius, therefore whatsoever you have 
spoken, confirmed, and pronounced for the safe custody 
of the deposit we likewise speak, confirm, and pro- 



i So 



Life of Pius LX* 



nounce; and with one voice and one mind we reject 
everything which, as being opposed to divine faith, the 
salvation of souls, and the good of human society, you 
have judged fit to reprove and reject. For that is firmly 
and deeply established in our consciousness which the 
fathers at Florence defined in their decree on Union, 
that the Roman Pontiff ' is the vicar of Christ, head cf the 
whole Church, and father and teacher of all Christians ; 
and that to him, in the person of blessed Peter, has been 
committed by our Lord Jesus Christ full power to feed, 
to rule, and to govern the universal Church ! ' " 

The nth of April, 1869, was the fiftieth anni- 
versary of the Pope's first Mass, and his " golden 
jubilee " was celebrated all over the world with 
extraordinary demonstrations of regard. The sove- 
reigns of Europe sent him autograph letters of 
congratulation. The people made offerings of 
money and other valuable presents, and deputations 
from distant countries travelled to Rome to make 
a personal protestation of loyalty and affection. 
Never before, said a German archbishop in a 
pastoral letter on this occasion, has any pope been 
brought so close to the universal heart of humanity. 
"Ah! my God," exclaimed the Holy Father, in 
replying to an address by certain pilgrims, " have 
mercy on me ; my happiness is too great. I fear 
lest, when I appear before thy justice, thou may est 
say to me, ( Thou hast had thy reward on earth.' 
No, it is not for me, O my God ; the love of these 
Christians is for thee — for thee alone ! " The 
costly tributes presented to the Holy Father at this 
jubilee were publicly displayed in the halls of the 



The Centenary of Peter. 1 8 1 

Vatican. As Pius walked through the collection 
with his guests, " Here," said he, " is my Universal 
Exhibition. And here," laying his hand upon the 
mighty pile of signed addresses, "is the universal 
suffrage of Christendom." 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 

I HAVE mentioned in the proper place the 
first public announcement of the intention 
of Pius IX. to summon an oecumenical council. 
But the project had been for a long time under 
serious consideration. On the 6th of December, 
1864, the Pope presided in the Vatican palace 
over a session of the Congregation of Rites, com- 
posed of cardinals and officials. After the opening 
prayer the officials were requested to retire, and 
the cardinals remained for some time in secret con- 
ference with the Pontiff.* This unusual event 
caused great surprise and curiosity. It was not 
known until long afterward that the Holy Father 
had communicated to the Sacred College the 
thought, which had been for some years in his mind, 
of convoking a council " as an extraordinary remedy 
to the extraordinary needs of the Christian world," 
and had required from each of the cardinals then 
in Rome a written opinion on the subject. Twenty- 
one answers were submitted in due time to this 

* See The True Story of the Vatican Council, by Cardinal Manning 
(London. 1877). I have drawn the history of the council almost en- 
tirely from this admirable little book. 

182 



The Vatican Council. 



183 



command. All except two agreed that the dis- 
orders of the world — the tendency to exclude the 
Church and revelation from the sphere of civil 
society and science ; the progress of " modern re- 
volutionary liberalism," which consists in the asser- 
tion of the supremacy of the state over the spiritual 
jurisdiction of the Church, over education, mar- 
riage, consecrated property, and the temporal power 
of the head of the Church ; the spread of indif- 
ferentism ; the infiltration of rationalistic principles 
into the philosophy of certain Catholic schools; 
and changes made necessary in Church discipline 
by changes in the general condition of society dur- 
ing the three hundred years since the Council of 
Trent — did call for correction by a general council. 
Four of the cardinals doubted whether the time 
was convenient for the assembling of a council, but 
they believed that all the preparations ought to be 
made for it. One declined to express a positive 
opinion, submitting himself to the judgment of the 
Pontiff. Only two opposed the project. The ma- 
jority foresaw many difficulties, but they held that 
the need was greater than the danger. With re- 
gard to the subjects to be treated, the cardinals 
suggested the condemnation of modern errors, the 
exposition of Catholic doctrine, the observance and 
modification of discipline, the raising of the state of 
the clergy and the religious orders, the license of 
the press, secret societies, marriage, etc. Only two 
spoke of infallibility. Only two spoke of the tem- 
poral power. Only one spoke of the Syllabus. 



Life of Pius IX. 



The next step was the appointment in March, 
1865, of a commission, composed of Cardinals Pa- 
trizi, Reisach, Panebianco, Bizzarri, and Catering 
to weigh all these written opinions, to consider still 
more carefully the reasons for and against the con- 
vocation, and to advise upon the proper mode of 
proceeding in case the decision should be in the 
affirmative. The commission judged that the as- 
sembling of a council was " relatively necessary " 
and opportune, and that a Congregation of Direc- 
tion ought to be appointed to report upon the 
questions, whether of doctrine or discipline, proper 
to be treated. In accordance with this recom- 
mendation the congregation was accordingly con- 
stituted of the five cardinals already named and 
a number of theologians and canonists selected in 
Rome and from other nations ; and the whole 
body was divided into four sections, each having 
its own class of subjects — namely, 1. Doctrine; 2. 
Political, Ecclesiastical, or Mixed Questions; 3. 
Missions and the Oriental Churches : 4. Discipline. 
In April confidential letters were addressed to 
thirty- six bishops in Europe, selected for their 
learning and experience, and also to certain bishops 
in the East, asking their opinions as to the proper 
matters to be treated. Nearly all replied that the 
prevalent evil of our time is a universal perversion 
and confusion of first truths and principles which 
assail the foundations of truth and the preambles 
of all belief. They spoke of the nature and exist- 
ence of God ; the divine institution, rights, inde- 



The Vatican Council. 185 

pendence, and authority of the Church ; the tem- 
poral power; socialism, communism, indifferentism, 
naturalism; Christian marriage; the relations of 
Church and state, etc. Many proposed the Syl- 
labus as an admirable outline of the work of a 
council. One and all expressed the greatest delight 
at the decision to call a council; but the chief 
object for which Protestant writers believe the 
fathers of the world were to be assembled — namely, 
the definition of papal infallibility — was hardly so 
much as mentioned. " The true motive of the 
Vatican Council," says Cardinal Manning, " is 
transparent to all calm and just minds. For three 
hundred years no general council had been held; 
for three hundred years the greatest change that 
has ever come upon the world since its conversion 
to Christianity had steadily passed upon it. The 
first period of the Church gradually brought about 
the union of the spiritual and civil powers oi the 
world in amity and co-operation. The last three 
hundred years have parted and opposed them to 
each other. . . . The Church began not with 
kings but with the peoples of the world, and to the 
peoples, it may be, the Church will once more re- 
turn. The princes and governments and legisla- 
tures of the world were everywhere against it at 
its outset; they are so again. But the hostility of 
the nineteenth century is keener than the hostility 
of the first. Then the world had never believed in 
Christianity; now it is falling from it. But the 
Church is the same, and can renew its relations 



1 86 Life of Pius IX. 



with whatsoever forms of civil life the world is 
pleased to fashion for itself. If, as political fore- 
sight has predicted, all nations are on their way to 
democracy, the Church will know how to meet 
this new and strange aspect of the world. The 
high policy of wisdom by which the pontiffs held 
together the dynasties of the Middle Age will know 
how to hold together the peoples who still believe. 
Such was the world on which Pius IX. was looking 
out when he conceived the tfiougnt of an oecu- 
menical council. He saw the world which was 
once all Catholic tossed and harassed by the revolt 
of its intellect against the revelation of God, and 
of its will against his law ; by the revolt of civil 
society against the sovereignty of God; and by the 
anti-Christian spirit which is driving on princes 
and governments towards anti- Christian revolutions. 
He to whom, in the words of St. John Chrysostom, 
the whole world was committed, saw in the Council 
of the Vatican the only adequate remedy for the 
world-wide evils of the nineteenth century." 

The question of calling a council being decided, 
it remained to determine whether in the existing 
condition of politics its speedy convocation would 
be prudent. In November, 1865, the Holy Father 
asked the advice on this head of the nuncios at 
Paris, Vienna, Madrid, Munich, and Brussels; and 
if the times had been favorable it was his intention 
to open the august assemblage on the centenary 
of St. Peter, in June, 1867. But the war between 
Austria and Prussia caused all the preparations to 



The Vatican Council. 



is; 



be suspended. No allusion was made to the 
council in the letters of invitation to the centenary ; 
and when it was at last announced in the con- 
sistory of June 26, 1867, the date was still unde- 
termined. A year later Pius consulted the cardinals 
as to the expediency of fixing the opening for the 
8th of December, 1869, and by their unanimous 
advice the bull of indiction, convoking the council 
for that day, was issued on the feast of SS. Peter 
and Paul, June 29, 1868. 

It has already been remarked that the formal 
definition of the infallibility of the Pontiff follow- 
ed logically from the tendencies of the past few 
years, and especially from the circumstances at- 
tending the three previous assemblies of bishops 
held in Rome during the pontificate of Pius IX. 
But if the desires of the believers in the doctrine 
had not been enough to ensure its promulgation, 
the opposition of its adversaries would certainly 
have sufficed for that result. In France the last 
remnant of the Gallican sentiment found expression 
in the publications of Bishop Maret, the Abbe 
Gratry, and some others, while Bishop Dupanloup 
led a small party which, without questioning the 
truth of the doctrine, remonstrated against the poli- 
cy of defining it. The centre of opposition to the 
dogma was, however, in Munich, where Dr. Dollin- 
ger was the head of an unfaithful school which 
Pius had already marked with the censure of the 
supreme authority. The anonymous treatise by 
" Janus on The Pope and the Cowicil appeared 



i88 



Life of Pius IX. 



from this source in 1868, and made a profound 
sensation all over the continent. It attacked the 
doctrine with historical arguments, and it first put 
forth the fiction, afterwards repeated by all the 
anti-Catholic press with its million tongues, that 
the sole purpose of the council was to declare 
papal infallibility by acclamation, and that the 
moving spirit behind it was a Jesuit conspiracy. 
Conferences were held in France, Belgium, and 
Germany to organize an opposition. The secular 
governments were drawn into the plot. In April, 
1869, a circular despatch, prepared by Dr. Dollin- 
ger, but signed by the Bavarian minister, Prince 
Hohenlohe, invited the other European powers to 
combine with Bavaria in resistance to the defini- 
tion. Italy, by its diplomatic agents, urged the 
governments to prevent the assembling of the 
council. Spain threatened the Pope with a hostile 
league composed of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, 
and Bavaria. Finally, Italy and Bavaria united 
in a request to the French Government to with- 
draw its troops from Rome, " in order to ensure 
the freedom of the council " — in other words, in 
order to let Victor Emanuel seize the city. An 
anonymous argument against the opportuneness 
of defining the papal infallibility appeared in five 
languages, and was distributed to the bishops by 
the civil authorities. The newspapers of every 
country and of every shade of belief, except the 
true one, began to assail the council in advance. 
The effect of this wide-spread conspiracy against 



The Vatican Council. 189 

the definition was to make its adoption certain. 
" It was seen at once," says Dr. Manning, " that 
not only the truth of a doctrine but the indepen- 
dence of the Church was at stake. If the Church 
should hesitate or give way before an opposition 
of newspapers and of governments, its office as 
witness and teacher of revelation would be shaken 
throughout the world." 

The Commission of Direction consisted of five 
cardinal presidents, eight bishops, and an arch- 
bishop as secretary. To it were joined one hundred 
and two consultors, of whom sixty-nine were secular 
priests, eight Jesuits, four Dominicans, two Augus- 
tinians, and the rest members of other religious 
orders or congregations. This commission drew 
up the rules of proceeding, but they were published 
on the authority of the Pope, the consultors decid- 
ing that the regulation of the council belonged to 
the power which convened it. The commission 
then prepared schemata or drafts of such decrees as 
it proposed for discussion ; it was provided that 
any bishop desiring to introduce other matter should 
submit it first to a special commission of twenty- 
six, whose judgment required the ratification of the 
Pontiff. The decrees drawn up in advance were 
six — namely, 1. Schema on Catholic Doctrine 
against the manifold errors flowing from rational- 
ism ; 2. Schema on the Church of Christ; 3. 
Schema on the Office of Bishops; 4. Schema on 
the Vacancy of Sees ; 5. Schema on the Life and 
Manners of the Clergy ; 6. Schema on the Little 



Life of Pius IX. 



Catechism. The Pope was careful to explain to 
the bishops by his formal apostolic letter. that he 
had abstained from giving these drafts or schemata 
any sanction ; they were submitted for unrestricted 
discussion, and might all be rejected if the fathers 
thought fit. Careful arrangements were made to 
secure the greatest freedom of debate, and the 
most minute examination both of the original sche- 
mata and of whatever amendments might be sug- 
gested, every point being fully considered both in 
the general congregation of the bishops and in the 
appropriate committees. The committees, or " de- 
putations," as they were called, were six in number 
— namely, i. On excuses for non-attendance and for 
leave of absence, 5 members; 2. Grievances and 
complaints, 5 members; 3. Faith, 24 members; 4. 
Discipline, 24 members; 5. Regular orders, 24 
members ; 6. Oriental rites and missions, 24 mem- 
bers. Each of the last four had a cardinal for 
president, named by the Pope ; the members were 
elected by ballot in the full council. The most 
important committee was that on Faith ; Cardinal 
Bilio was chairman, and the members comprised 3 
bishops from Italy, 2 from France, 2 from Spain, 
2 from the United States (Baltimore and San Fran- 
cisco), 2 from South America, one each from Eng- 
land, Ireland, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Holland, 
Belgium, Bavaria, Prussia, Switzerland, and India, 
and the Armenian patriarch. 

On the 8th of December, 1869, the Council of 
the Vatican opened with magnificent ceremony. 



The Vatican Council. 



igi 



The number of the fathers present was seven hun- 
dred and twenty- two * — namely, 49 cardinals, 9 
patriarchs, 4 primates, 123 archbishops, 480 bishops, 
28 abbots, and 29 chiefs of religious orders. Rain 
fell in torrents, but from an early hour in the 
morning the church and square of St. Peter were 
filled with visitors from all parts of the earth, and 
several royal personages were among the privileged 
spectators. The sessions were held in the right- 
hand transept of St. Peter's, which had been divided 
from the body of the church by a massive partition. 
Mass was celebrated by Cardinal Patrizi, the Veni 
Creator was sung, and the Holy Father made a 
short address. Thus began the momentous de- 
liberations which, prolonged for more than eight 
months, were to " mark this age, as the Council of 
Nicaea and the Council of Trent now mark in his- 
tory the fourth and the sixteenth centuries." 

The business of the council was transacted in 
private, and the fathers were pledged to.secrecy ; but 
the newspaper press was soon filled with the most 
exciting reports of scenes within the sacred hall, 
quarrels among the bishops, and violent attempts 
of the partisans of infallibility to stifle free discus- 
sion. The Augsburg Gazette in particular became 
the receptacle of torrents of mendacity, which were 
thence distributed all over the world. The most 
important of the innumerable falsehoods were ex- 
posed from time to time by certain of the bishops, 

* The number rose afterwards to 766 — 541 from Europe, 114 from 
America, 83 from Asia, 14 from Africa, 14 from Oceanica. 



192 



Life of Pius IX. 



and the world has now nearly forgotten them. 
Whatever vitality they may have retained has per- 
haps been destroyed by the True Story of Cardinal 
Manning, who was " enabled to attend, with the 
exception of about three or four days, every session 
of the council, eighty-nine ip number, from the 
opening to the close, " and who bears the most im- 
pressive testimony to the " calmness, self-respect, 
mutual forbearance, courtesy, and self-control " of 
the venerable assembly, the absolute freedom and 
great fulness of the debates, and the spirit of cha- 
rity and devotion which filled the entire body. A 
fair idea of the thoroughness of the discussions is 
given by Dr. Manning's detailed account of the 
passing of the first decree, on the Catholic Faith. 
The original schema was entirely remodelled, then 
amended six times in its new shape, referred again 
and again from general congregation to committee, 
and from committee back again to general congre- 
gation, and finally adopted unanimously after 364 
separate amendments had been examined and voted 
on, and four months' time had been spent in the 
labor. The first dogmatic constitution, <c Of the 
Catholic Faith," was thus formally adopted in the 
third " public session " of the council, April 24, 
1870, when 667 votes were cast. 

In preparing the second schema, on the Church 
of Christ, the Commission of Direction was obliged 
to consider the question of infallibility, and on the 
nth of February, 1869, it reached the questions, 
first, " whether the infallibility of the Roman Pon- 



The Vatican Council. 193 



tiff can be defined as an article of faith"; and, se- 
condly, " whether it ought to be defined." To the 
first the commission replied unanimously in the 
affirmative. Respecting the second they decided, 
with one dissenting voice, " that this subject ought 
not to be proposed by the Apostolic See except at 
the petition of the bishops." When the schema on 

the Church was introduced" therefore, it contained 

, ^ . ... 
no definition of the docTrine of infallibility. But a 

large majority of the bishops believed that the defi- 
nition was necessary in view of what had taken 
place outside the council, and they consequently 
resorted to the regular course of presenting a peti- 
tion to the Commission of Postulates, asking that 
a chapter on the subject of infallibility should be 
added to the schema. The petition, drawn up by 
a few of the bishops in an informal meeting, re- 
ceived four hundred and fifty signatures. In the 
meantime the opposition circulated a petition 
against the introduction of the subject, and this re- 
ceived about one hundred names. Both sides gave 
a summary of their reasons. "Once for all," says 
Cardinal Manning, "let it be said that the question 
whether the infallibility of the head of the Church 
be a true doctrine or not was never discussed in the 
council, nor even proposed to it. The only ques- 
tion was whether it was expedient, prudent, season- 
able, and timely, regard being had to the condition 
of the world, of the nations of Europe, of the Chris- 
tians in separation from the Church, to put this 
truth in the form of a definition." " A grave injus- 



194 



Life of Pius IX. 



tice has been done to the bishops who opposed the 
definition. The world outside the Church, not be- 
lieving in infallibility, claimed them as its own. 
They were treated as if they denied the truth of the 
doctrine itself. Their opposition was not to the 
doctrine, but to the defining of it; and not even ab- 
solutely to the defining of it, but to the defining of 
it at this time. . . . They who were in the coun- 
cil may be permitted to bear witness to what they 
heard and know. Not five bishops in the council 
could be justly thought to have opposed the truth 
of the doctrine. This is the testimony of one who 
heard the whole discussion, and never heard an ex- 
plicit denial of its truth." 

The petitions were duly presented to the Com- 
mission of Postulates on the 9th of February, 1870, 
and the commission decided, with hardly any dis- 
sent, that a new chapter on infallibility should be 
introduced. The petition of the four hundred and 
fifty had been immediately printed in the Augslurg 
Gazette, and a storm of opposition broke forth. The 
French Minister of Foreign Affairs on the 20th of 
February addressed to Rome a diplomatic protest 
against the declaration, alleging that it involved the 
extension of infallibility to facts of history, philoso- 
phy, and science external to revelation, as well as 
the absolute subordination to ecclesiastical au- 
thority of the constituent principles of civil society, 
the rights and duties of citizenship, and in general 
all the rights of the state; and he asked " how it 
could have been imagined that princes would lower 



The Vatican Council '. 



i9S 



their sovereignty before the supremacy of the court 
of Rome." Cardinal Antonelli, in answering this 
extraordinary communication, exposed its misrepre- 
sentations of the character and significance of the 
proposed definition, and pertinently reminded the 
count that the doctrines of which he complained 
were no more than the exposition of the maxims 
and fundamental principles of the Church, repeated 
over and over again in bulls, pontifical constitu- 
tions, and the acts of councils, taught in all Catho- 
lic schools and defended by a host of ecclesiastical 
writers. 

One day, when the clamor against the council 
was at its height, the Holy Father said : " I have 
just been w r arned that if the council persist in 
making this definition the protection of the French 
army will be withdrawn." And then after a pause 
he added, with great calmness: "As if the unwor- 
thy Vicar of Jesus Christ could be swayed by such 
motives as these !" 

The new chapter on infallibility was distributed 
to the council on the 7th of March, and eighteen 
days were allowed for the submission of amend- 
ments. The general discussion on the schema of 
the Primacy, whereof the question of infallibility 
formed the fourth chapter, did not begin until the 
14th of May, and it lasted through fourteen sessions. 
By that time sixty-four had spoken; the argument 
was evidently exhausted, and the opposition began 
to appear factious. According to the regulations 
of the council, the presiding cardinal, on the peti- 



196 



Life of Fins IX. 



tion of ten bishops, might take the sense of the 
whole body whether the discussion should close. A 
petition signed not by ten, but by ten or fifteen 
times ten, was made to this end, and the general 
debate was stopped by the vote of an immense ma- 
jority. Then came the special discussions on the 
introduction to the schema and on each of its four 
chapters. The fourth chapter, on infallibility, was 
reached on the 15th of June, and occupied eleven 
sessions, during which fifty-seven bishops spoke 
and ninety-six amendments were offered. After all 
the chapters had been adopted singly the whole 
schema was put to the decisive vote on the 13th of 
July. There were 601 fathers present; 451 voted 
placet, or "ay"; 88 11011 placet, or "no"; and 62 
placet jiLxla modum, or " ay, with modifications." 
This involved the examination of more written 
amendments, to the number of one hundred and 
sixty-five, and on the 16th the schema was again 
put to the vote and passed. 

It remained now to formally promulgate the de- 
cree in public session. There w r ere many reasons 
why this last act in the great work should be has- 
tened. A number of the bishops had been com- 
pelled by illness to return home ; others were sick 
in Rome ; the summer heats were severe and dan- 
gerous; more than all, the political situation was 
full of menace, the definitive rupture between 
France and Prussia having occurred on the 14th 
of July, when both Powers recalled their ambassa- 
dors. On the 15th the Archbishop of Bordeaux 



The Vatican Council. 



197 



waited upon the Holy Father to beg, in the name 
of several of the French prelates, that he would 
complete the definition at once. On the stairs he 
met the Primate of Hungary, with the archbishops 
of Paris, Munich, and Milan, the Bishop of Dijon, 
and Bishop Ketteler of Mayence, who came to pe- 
tition for a delay or a modification of the decree, 
which they still regarded as inopportune in the ex- 
isting condition of society. This double demon- 
stration must have convinced the Holy Father, if 
perchance he was in doubt, that the controversy 
ought to be promptly closed. He replied that the 
circumstances would not admit of delay, and that 
modifications were impossible. The 18th was ac- 
cordingly appointed for the fourth public session of 
the council and the promulgation of the dogmatic 
constitution " Of the Church of Christ/' including 
the infallibility of the Pontiff. On the previous 
evening fifty five bishops of the opposition, un- 
willing to assent to the prudence or usefulness of 
the definition, but still not attacking the doctrine, 
signed a paper announcing their intention not to 
appear at the public session. It was believed that 
they left Rome. 

The fathers assembled at nine o'clock on the 
morning of the 18th in the hall of the council, 
whose wide doors on this occasion, as at the other 
public sessions, were thrown open. Mass being 
over, the Pope entered, attended by the officers of 
his court, and took his place on the throne. The 
customary prayers and the Litany of the Saints were 



Life of Piles IX. 



chanted. The Veni Creator was sung by the fathers 
and people together. Then the dogmatic consti- 
tution was read aloud, closing with these words : 

u We teach and define it to be a doctrine divinely re- 
vealed that when the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra 
— that is, when in the exercise of his office of pastor and 
teacher of all Christians, and in virtue of his supreme 
apostolical authority, he defines that a doctrine of faith 
or morals is to be held by the universal Church— he pos- 
sesses, through the divine assistance promised to him in 
the Blessed Peter, that infallibility with which the divine 
Redeemer wished his Church to be endowed in defining 
a doctrine of faith or morals ; and, therefore, that such 
definitions cf the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of 
themselves, and not from the consent of the Church." 

The name of every bishop was called in turn; 
535 were present; 533 voted placet; 2 only voted 
7W7i pL:et. As the roll began, a furious storm burst 
over Rome, and peals of thunder mingled with the 
declarations of the fathers. The Pontiff confirmed 
the decree in the usual form, whereat there rose 
from the lips of the bishops within the hall and the 
multitude in the open church a murmur of appro- 
bation which swelled by degrees to a shout of " Viva 
Pio JYono, Papa infallibile / " In a short allocution 
the Holy Father prayed that the few who had been 
of another mind in the time of storm might, in a 
season of calm and " in the gentle air/' be reunited 
to the great majority of their brethren. His prayer 
was granted. All the bishops of the opposition 
gave their adhesion to the decree, and the schism 
of the " Old Catholics," under Dr. Dollinger, was 



The Vatican Council. 



of too little consequence to be counted a misfor- 
tune, except for the handful of disaffected philoso- 
phers who took part in it. The session closed with 
the Te Deutn, in which the chorus of the populace 
drowned the voices of the papal choir. 

The work of the council w r as not complete ; but 
the inconveniences of a longer stay in Rome were 
so serious to most of the bishops that the sessions 
were prorogued for the rest of the summer. Before 
the holiday came to an end the Pope ceased to be 
master of Rome, and the council, never dissolved, 
has never yet been able to reassemble. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



THE SEIZURE OF ROME. 



OUR days after the solemn scene described in 



A the last chapter Pius addressed the King of 
Prussia and the Emperor of the French in the vain 
hope of averting the impending war. His letter to 
the emperor has never been published, neither has 
the emperor's reply, but we have the correspon- 
dence with the German king. " Vicar of Christ on 
earth," wrote the Holy Father, u I cannot do less 
than offer my mediation. It is that of a sovereign 
who, in his quality as king, can excite no one's jea- 
lousy, since his territory is so small, but who, never- 
theless, may inspire confidence by the moral and 
religious influence which he personifies." " Holy 
Pontiff," replied the king, " I have not been sur- 
prised but profoundly moved in reading the touch- 
ing words traced by your hand in the name of the 
God of peace. How can my heart remain insensi- 
ble to such a powerful appeal ? God is my witness 
that this war was provoked neither by me nor by 
my people. If your Holiness could offer me, on 
the part of the power which has so unexpectedly 
declared war, the assurance of sincerely pacific dis- 




The Seizure of Rome. 



201 



positions, and guarantees against the renewal of 
such a violation of the peace and tranquillity of 
Europe, I certainly would not hesitate to accept 
them from your venerable hands, united as I am to 
your Holiness by the ties of Christian charity and 
sincere friendship." Later, when France was nearly 
crushed by the reverses of the campaign, the Pope 
renewed his efforts for peace. While the govern- 
ment of the National Defence was established at 
Tours, he instructed the archbishop of that city to 
use all his influence against the useless prolongation 
of the war, and at the same time he sent Arch- 
bishop Ledochowski to Versailles to counsel mode- 
ration to the victors. 

Meanwhile, the four or five thousand French 
troops left in Rome after the last Garibaldian inva- 
sion had been promptly withdrawn by Napoleon, 
not because he supposed he wanted them — for when 
he gave the order he was just setting out " with a 
light heart " on his march to ruin— but because he 
wished to please the Italian Government. "The 
political necessity is evident," wrote M. de Gra- 
mont; " we must conciliate the good dispositions of 
the cabinet of Florence." Deceived in everything, 
victim always of his own intrigues, Napoleon trusted 
to an alliance with Italy against the Prussians; he 
gave up the Pope as the price of it, and he got no- 
thing in return. Italy took the bribe, and then at- 
tached herself immediately to the other side. The 
troops embarked at Civita Vecchia on the 2d and 
4th of August. Fighting began between the 



202 Life of Pius IX. 

French and Prussians on the 2d, and the French 
met the first of their long series of defeats at Weis- 
sembourg on the 4th. 

The Italian Government lost no time in tearing 
the Turin convention to fragments and marching 
in at the door which Napoleon had left open. First 
came the usual complaint that the Papacy consti- 
tuted a hostile government in the midst of the 
kingdom, a focus of disorder, a constant danger to 
the state. Then, on the 8th of September, Victor 
Emanuel sent a letter to the Pope by the hands of 
Count Ponza di San Martino, and at the same time 
the Italian troops prepared for the invasion of the 
pontifical territory. " Most Holy Father," wrote 
the king, " with the affection of a son, with the 
faith of a Catholic, with the loyalty of a king, 
with the sentiment of an Italian, I address myself 
again, as I have had to do before, to the heart of 
your Holiness. A storm full of perils menaces 
Europe. The party of the international revolution 
grows bolder and more audacious, and is preparing, 
especially in Italy and in the provinces governed 
by your Holiness, the last blows against monarchy 
and the popedom. I rind it imperatively necessary, 
for the security of Italy and the Holy See, that my 
troops already guarding the frontiers shall advance 
and occupy the positions indispensable for the se- 
curity of your Holiness and the maintenance of 
order. Let me hope that in satisfying the national 
aspirations your Holiness, as the chief of Catholi- 
city, surrounded by the devotion of the Italian 



The Seizure of Rome. 



populations, will preserve on the banks of the Tiber 
a see glorious and independent of all human sove- 
reignty. In delivering Rome from foreign troops 
your Holiness will have accomplished a marvellous 
work and restored peace to the Church." 

The Count di San Martino was admitted to an 
audience, which cannot have been of the most 
agreeable character. He spoke of guarantees for 
the independence of the Church. " And who will 
guarantee me your guarantees ?" exclaimed Pius. 
" Your king is king no longer. He can promise 
nothing. He is the servant of his parliament, and 
parliament is the servant of the secret societies ; 
and they will cast the king down when they have 
no further use for him. Go, count; I will give 
you my answer to-morrow. I am too deeply 
moved with sorrow and indignation to write at 
present.'' The answer, dated on the nth of Sep- 
tember, was as follows : 

<( Your Majesty: By Count Ponza di San Martino a 
letter has been presented to me which your majesty has 
been pleased to address to me, but which is not worthy 
of an affectionate son who boasts of professing the 
Catholic faith. Into the details of that letter I do not 
enter, lest I should renew the pain which its first perusal 
caused me. I bless God, who has permitted your majes- 
ty to bring to a climax of bitterness the closing period 
of my life. As for the rest, I cannot admit certain de- 
mands nor conform myself to certain principles con- 
tained in your letter. Again I invoke God and remit to 
his hands my cause, which is altogether his ow;i. I 
pray him to grant many graces to )Our majesty, to free 



204 



Life of Pius IX. 



you from dangers, and afford you the mercies which you 
need." 

But the king had not waited for the answer. On 
that day the Italian army, sixty thousand strong, 
had crossed the frontier, and, under the command 
of General Cadorna, was already marching straight 
towards Rome. 

The news of the interview with Count Ponza di 
San Martino on the ioth, and the drift of his mes- 
sage as well as of the answer, spread rapidly 
throughout the city. On the same afternoon the 
Pope was to inaugurate a new public fountain, and 
the whole population seemed to be in the streets, 
as if to offer a special testimonial of respect and 
affection. The festival in itself was nothing more 
than Rome was used to, but the serious circum- 
stances of the day made it unusually impressive. 
" Never," wrote a French diplomatist, " have I 
seen a demonstration so ardent and so spontaneous. 
The Holy Father was calm and smiling, and no one 
could detect upon the countenance of the noble old 
man a trace of those thoughts which must have sad- 
dened his heart. I came home deeply affected by 
all that I had seen, and never shall I forget the fete 
of the inauguration of the Acqua Marcia." On 
the same day the Pope gave audience to a num- 
ber of the Papal Zouaves from Canada. " My 
children," said he, " we have two enemies — one 
without, against whom we can promise only one 
thing, to do our duty ; the other within, whom we 
can always overcome, if we will, by the grace of 



The Seizure of Rome. 



205 



God. This latter is the only one we need fear. 
Fear sin, then, my children ; and for the rest, what 
matters it ? Nothing happens but what our dear 
Lord wills." 

A triduum was ordered at St. Peter's to beg the 
divine mercy upon the city of Rome. The French 
observer whom I have just quoted writes of the last 
day : " We have all seen and admired the glorious 
ceremonies of Christmas and Easter in this great 
basilica of St. Peter, but what are they by the side of 
the humble demonstration of the triduum on the 
15th of September, 1870 ? All Rome was there, 
kneeling on the pavement of the church and chant- 
ing the litanies, of which the Pope intoned each ver- 
sicle. It is the truest manifestation of the Catholic 
faith that I have ever been allowed to witness, and 
we all felt ourselves moved to the bottom of our 
hearts while listening to the strong voice of the old 
Pope, begging of Heaven to protect the city of 
Rome and to bless its inhabitants." 

Arms were secretly distributed by the Italian 
authorities within the city, and every device was 
employed to provoke a rising, but in vain. The 
Prussian ambassador, Baron von Arnim, who had 
been going back and forth between Rome and the 
Italian headquarters, openly took sides against the 
Pope, and even invited the diplomatic body to sign 
an address advising his Holiness to yield — a pro- 
posal which all the ministers emphatically rejected. 
On the 19th of September Cadorna appeared be- 
fore the walls and gave notice that the bombard- 



2o6 Life of Pius IX. 



merit would open the following morning. All the 
pontifical troops, to the number of about ten thou- 
sand, had gradually been called in, and General 
Kanzler made the best dispositions possible for at 
least a formal defence. The following letter was 
addressed to him by the Holy Father on the 
19 th : 

"General: Now that a great sacrilege and an enor- 
mous injustice is about to be perpetrated, and the sol- 
diers of a Catholic monarch, without provocation, with- 
out even the appearance of excuse, are assembled to 
besiege the capital of the Catholic world, I feel, in the 
first place, the necessity of thanking you, general, and 
all our troops, for your generous conduct up to the 
present moment, for your marks of affection towards the 
Holy See, and your readiness to consecrate yourselves 
entirely to the defence of this metropolis. Let these 
words be a solemn document to testify the discipline, 
valor, and loyalty of the troops in the service of the 
Holy See. 

<; With regard, however, to the duration of the defence, 
it is my duty to command that the resistance consist only 
of a protest sufficient — and no more — to establish the 
fact of violence. As soon as a breach is effected nego- 
tiations must be opened for the surrender of the city. At 
a moment when all Europe deplores the numerous vic- 
tims of a war between two great nations it must not be 
said that the Vicar of Christ, however unjustly assailed, 
has consented to a great effusion of blood. Our cause 
is the cause of God, and to his hands we commit all our 
defence. 

' 'From my heart, general, I give my benediction to 
you and to all our troops.' 

Having despatched these orders, Pius went for 



The Seizure of Rome. 



207 



the last time to pray in the basilica of St. John Late- 
ran and the chapel of the Scala Santa. He made on 
his knees the painful ascent of the twenty-eight 
marble steps from the judgment-hall of Pilate, and, 
having spent some time in devotion in the little 
sanctuary at the top, he returned, followed by the 
acclamations of an affectionate multitude, to the 
Vatican, which he was never afterwards to leave. 

He had requested all the members of the diplo- 
matic body to go to him as soon as the firing be- 
gan. Accordingly, at the first sound of the artil- 
lery on the morning of the 20th, all the ministers 
except Baron von Arnim assembled in the throne- 
room of the Vatican. Many of the cardinals were 
there, the heads of religious orders, the prelates, 
and a number of the Roman nobility. The Pope 
came out of his apartments at seven o'clock, and 
invited the ambassadors to be present at his Mass, 
which he celebrated in his private chapel in the 
midst of the noise of the cannonade and of burst- 
ing shells, which fell even in the gardens of the 
Vatican. During the Mass the Litany of the Blessed 
Virgin was intoned by the cardinals. After Mass 
chocolate and ices were served to the guests, ac- 
cording to the Roman custom, while the Pope re- 
tired to his oratory. At nine o'clock, having heard 
a second Mass and finished his prayers of thanks- 
giving, he received the ambassadors in his study. 
Baron von Arnim had now joined his colleagues. 
The habitual sweetness of the Holy Father's coun- 
tenance was overshadowed by a profound sadness; 



208 



Life of Pius IX. 



his speech was slow and solemn ; his manner was 
indescribably impressive. He addressed a few kind- 
ly words to each of the ministers individually. 
Then, sitting by his table, and inviting them all to 
sit around him, he talked for an hour in a familiar 
strain, losing himself occasionally in intervals of si- 
lence and abstraction, and turning involuntarily 
from time to time towards the windows, through 
which one could see the smoke of the bombard- 
ment. He commended to the care of the ambas- 
sadors the Papal Zouaves, who were about to become 
prisoners, and begged their excellencies to obtain 
from the Italian general the most favorable terms for 
these gallant soldiers. "And my poor Canadians ! " 
he suddenly exclaimed, a who will protect them ? " 
He recalled many events of his past life, even re- 
peated some of the incidents of his voyage to 
Chili. 6i Once before now the diplomatic body has 
assembled around me under circumstances some- 
thing like these. That was at the Quirinal. I re- 
member that there was not enough food in the 
palace to furnish dinner for all, and we sent around 
to the apartments of the earner ieri segreti who 
lodged at the Quirinal to collect whatever they 
had. The cook made a soup of these gatherings 
— a sort of Spanish olla podrida. 

" Yesterday I was at the spot where Christ was 
condemned. I mounted the Seala Santa ; it was 
a hard ascent, and I had to have a support, but I 
reached the top. These are the steps which our 
Lord trod when he went to judgment. In going up 



The Seizure of Rome. 



209 



I said to myself: Perhaps to-morrow I, too, shall 
be judged by the Catholics of Italy. Filii matris 
mece pugnaverunt contra me. I have need of great 
strength, and God gives it to me. Deo gratias I 

" The students of the American College have 
asked leave to fight for me, but I have thanked 
them and told them to devote themselves to the 
care of the wounded. 

" Yesterday, in returning from the Scala Santa, 
I saw all the flags which have been hung out 
in Rome as a protection. There were English, 
American, German, and even Turkish flags. 
Prince Doria displayed the English colors — I am 
sure I do not know why. When I returned from 
Gaeta I saw multitudes of flags hung along the 
route in my honor. Now it is different; it is not 
for me that these are flying. 

" Bixio, the famous Bixio, is with the Italian 
army. He is a general in these days. When he 
was a republican he intended to throw the Pope 
and the cardinals into the Tiber as soon as he 
entered Rome. In winter that would not be 
pleasant; in summer it would not be quite the 
same. It is not the flower of society which 
accompanies the Italians when they attack the 
father of all Catholics. We -have here a repeti- 
tion in a small way of what the young Romans did 
who repaired to the camp of Caesar after the cross- 
ing of the Rubicon. The Rubicon is crossed now. 
4 Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.' " 

At this point an officer of Gen. Kanzler's star! 



2IO 



Life of Pius IX. 



arrived with the news that after a severe cannon- 
ade a practicable breach had been made near the 
Porta Pia. The ambassadors retired, and left the 
Holy Father alone with Cardinal Antonelli, In a 
few moments they were recalled. There were 
tears in the Pope's eyes, and he spoke as follows : 
"I have just given the order to capitulate. De- 
fence is impossible any longer without a great 
sacrifice of life, and to that I will not consent. I 
do not speak to you of myself; it is not for myself 
that I weep, but for these poor children who came 
to defend me as their father. You will take care 
each of his own countrymen. There are all na- 
tions among them; there are French especially. 
Do not forget, I pray, the English and Canadians, 
who have no one here to represent them. I com- 
mend them all to you, that you may protect them 
from the ill treatment which others have had to 
endure during the past years. I release my sol- 
diers from their oath of fidelity, and leave them 
perfectly free. As for the conditions of the capitu- 
lation, you must see Gen. Kanzler, with whom 
everything is to be arranged." 

The Italian army, entering by the Porta Pia, was 
followed by a large number of civilians represented 
to be political exiles returning to their country. An 
eye-witness belonging to the diplomatic body thus 
describes the scene : " I followed this body of men 
composed of three or four thousand revolutionists, 
recruited in every corner of Italy. It marched in 
pretty good order, and without shouting, through 



The Seiziwe of Rome. 



211 



the whole length of the Via di Porta Pia ; but 
when they reached the piazza of the Quirinal those 
newly arrived were joined by their brethren and 
friends in Rome, commanded by a certain Marquis 
del Gallo, brother of the man w 7 ho married one of 
the Bonaparte family. The emigrants learned then 
that they had nothing more to fear from the ponti- 
fical soldiers, who were prisoners guarded by the 
Italian army. All danger having disappeared, 
each one took out of his pocket a tricolor cockade 
and a small flag, and the w T hole body of them, 
shouting and vociferating, directed their steps to- 
wards the Capitol, according to the requirements of 
revolutionary tradition. I was still on the piazza 
of the Quirinal watching this comedy when I saw a 
personage arrive on horseback, all bedizened with 
gold and decorations, before whom the crowd was 
respectfully bowing; it was the Baron von Arnim 
returning from the Villa Albani [Cadorna's head, 
quarters], and having made also his triumphant 
entry by the breach, mounted on the horse of an 
Italian soldier. ' Behold,' said I to myself, ' the 
compact sealed between Prussia and the Italian 
revolution.' In the Corso I found again my own 
Paris of the great days of the revolution ; nothing 
was wanting to complete the picture — men with 
sinister faces armed with muskets taken from the 
pontifical prisoners, others armed with pikes and 
daggers, then demonstrations, cries — in short, a 
genuine revolutionary orgie." * 

* Les Picmontais a, Rome. Par Henry d'Ideville. Paris. 



212 



Life of Pius IX. 



The prisoners, after marching out with the honors 
of war, the officers retaining their side-arms, were 
massed for the day in the Leonine City, or that 
part of Rome on the south si le of the Tiber, in- 
cluding St. Peter's and the Vatican; thence they 
were to be transported on the 21st to Civita Vec- 
chia — the foreigners to be sent home, the Romans 
to be removed in custody to Naples and Turin. 
When the time came for their departure the zou- 
aves in the piazza of St. Peter drew themselves up 
in a solid square, and Colonel Alet, placing himself 
at their head, waved his sword with the cry, " Long 
live Pius IX., Pontiff and King! " The cry was 
taken up all along the ranks ; hats were thrown up ; 
vivas rent the air ; a crowd of citizens who sur A 
rounded the troops and filled the balconies ~and 
windows of the neighboring houses joined in the 
enthusiastic cheers, and added to the picturesque as- 
pect of the stirring scene by the waving of hand- 
kerchiefs. The Holy Father appeared at the win- 
dow of his bedchamber, and, throwing it open, 
stood there for a moment with his white head bare 
and his hands lifted in benediction. But he could 
hardly pronounce the words. Overcome by emo- 
tion, his voice choked and he fell back in the arms 
of his attendants. 

General Kanzler, accompanied by his wife and 
Father Vannutelli, found him shortly afterwards, 
solitary and with bowed head, pacing the famous 
rooms enriched by the frescoes of Raphael. " He 
seemed to be suffering and exhausted to a remarkable 



The Seizure of Rome. 



213 



degree," said Father Vannutelli, " but the expres- 
sion of his face remained calm and full of goodness. 
He spoke to my sister, who burst into tears, and 
questioned her about the hospital, where she had 
passed the previous day, about the wounded, their 
number, the extent of their injuries, and their wants. 
* Poor children !' he exclaimed, i may Heaven re- 
ward them. This is a great crime ; the punish- 
ment will fall upon the heads of those who have 
committed it ! ' " 

For two or three days Rome was given up to 
disorder. In the bombardment sixteen pontifical 
soldiers had been killed and fifty-eight wounded; 
after the surrender as many as eighty persons — 
zouaves, priests, gendarmes, and others — are said 
to have been assassinated in the streets of Rome. 
Romans who had fought for the Pope were treated 
with outrageous indignity. Houses were pillaged 
and burned. " Lasciate il pnpolo sfogarsi" said Ca- 
dorna — u Let the people tire themselves out." The 
Leonine City was not occupied at first by the Ita- 
lians; it was left without either soldiers or police, 
and on the 2 2d a mob of Garibaldians, led by a 
brother of one of the criminals who blew up the 
barracks in 1867, tried to force an entrance to the 
Vatican. The pontifical gendarmes repulsed them, 
and one of the guards was killed. Cardinal Anto- 
n ell i thereupon requested Baron von Arnim to de- 
mand of General Cadorna the preservation of pub- 
lic order. 

On the 2d of October the conquerors ordered a 



214 



Life of Phis IX. 



plebiscitum on the question of the annexation of 
Rome to the kingdom of Italy. For some days 
previous a stream of voters, professing to be re- 
turned exiles, poured into Rome from ail parts of 
Italy, the Government compelling the railway com- 
panies to transport gratuitously all who presented 
themselves with tickets supplied by any of the pre- 
fects or sub-prefects of the kingdom. The figures 
of the poll, as announced by official authority, 
declared that 40.785 voted yes, and 46 no ! And 
yet there were some thousands of civil. functionaries, 
besides the whole body of the clergy, who were ne- 
cessarily opposed to annexation ; the entire Roman 
nobility, with a very few exceptions, was devoted to 
the papal authority, and remains so to this day; 
a large proportion of the lower and middle classes 
have always been papahni j and the clerks and 
other employees in Government offices, museums, 
libraries, schools, colleges, almost all threw up their 
situations rather than take the oath of allegiance to 
Victor Emanuel. Under these circumstances the 
figures of the official declaration speak for them- 
selves ; the plebiscitum was fraudulent on its face. 
Nevertheless, Rome was promptly declared annexed 
to the kingdom of Italy, although it was promised 
in the royal decree that the Pontiff should retain 
" the dignity the inviolability, and all the preroga- 
tives of sovereignty, " and that a special law should 
provide guarantees for his independence and the 
free exercise of the spiritual authority of the Holy 
See. The act afterwards passed by the Italian Par- 



The Seizure of Rome. 



215 



liament, in accordance with this promise, and known 
as the Law of the Guarantees, declares that 

" 1. The person of the Sovereign Pontiff is sacred and 
inviolable. 

" 2. Any attempt against the person of the Sovereign 
Pontiff, or provocation to commit the same, shall be 
punished with the same penalties as attempts against the 
person of the king. The offences and insults publicly 
committed directly against the person of the Pontiff by 
speeches or acts, or by the means indicated by the first 
article of the law concerning the press, to be punished 
with the same penalties fixed by the nineteenth article of 
the same law. 

u 3. The Italian Government pays to the So/ereign 
Pontiff within the territory of the kingdom the sovereign 
honors and pre-eminences accorded to him by Catholic 
sovereigns. 

14 4. There is set apart in favor of the Holy See the 
sum of 3,225,000 lire annually [about $645,000] * 

" 5. The Sovereign Pontiff, in addition to the allow- 
ance established by the preceding article, shall continue 
in the enjoyment of the apostolic palaces of the Vatican 
and the Lateran, with all the buildings, gardens, and 
lands which belong to them, as well as the villa of Castel 
Gandolfo with its appurtenances and dependencies." 

There are also elaborate provisions for the free 
intercourse between the Pontiff and the episcopate, 
and the free exercise by the clergy of their spiritual 
functions. But to say nothing of the inherent vice 
of the Law of Guarantees that it offered to the 
Holy Father as a favor a small part of what was 
all his by right, it was an illusive pledge which has 



* The Pope never accepted any part of this allowance. 



2l6 



Life of Pins IX. 



been broken over and over again, and is likely to 
be still more flagrantly violated if it is not wholly 
repealed. It does not even recognize the church's 
ownership of the little corner of Rome still occu- 
pied by the papal court. It allows the Pontiff to 
" enjoy" the Vatican, but it claims for the Italian 
Government the proprietorship of that palace as 
well as of St. Peter's. And I need hardly say that 
the pretence of suppressing " insults " against the 
person of the Pope has been from the outset an 
affront to common sense. The Italian press, and 
the speeches of public orators, and the debates in 
the Italian Parliament have teemed with vilifica- 
tion, outrage, and blasphemy. 

Almost the first act of the* new rulers of Rome 
was to confiscate the property of all ecclesiastical 
bodies and foundations whatsoever, save a very 
few which were exempted by name. This left 
nearly the whole body of the clergy destitute, and 
cut off the sole support of the churches and the 
parish priests. Next came the suppression of all 
religious orders ; 50,000 persons were thus turned 
into the street without the means of subsistence. 
The clergy were pressed into the army. Convents, 
churches, charitable and religious institutions were 
seized and sold, or converted to the uses of the 
Government. Schools were broken up ; education 
was secularized. The revenues of most of the 
bishops throughout the whole kingdom were cut 
off, and the support of the Italian episcopate was 
thrown upon the Sovereign Pontiff. The spirit of 



The Seizure of Rome. 



217 



the Italian laws and the Italian administration was 
thoroughly and in everything anti- Catholic and 
anti- Christian. All religious processions were pro- 
hibited. The chapels and crosses which pious 
hands had erected in the Colosseum to commemo- 
rate the martyrs of the first centuries were torn 
down, and the name of Christ was chiselled off the 
facade of the Roman College. Vice, violence, 
sacrilege, atheism everywhere followed in the track 
of the Piedmontese armies. They carried riot into 
the very churches. It was impossible that the 
Sovereign Pontiff should walk the streets of dese- 
crated Rome, exposing himself to the affronts of a 
hostile multitude or the compromising protection 
of a usurping police. Nor is it at all certain that 
his person would have been safe. Two months 
after the capture of Rome Monsignor de Merode, 
chancing to show himself at one of the balconies of 
the Vatican, was ordered back by one of the king's 
soldiers on guard below, who pointed his musket at 
him. At a later day a crowd, assembled in the 
piazza on the occasion of a festival, caught a mo- 
mentary glimpse of the white figure of the Pope as 
he passed before a window. Instantly a cry of ex- 
ultation burst forth ; the square filled as if by 
magic, everybody shouting Viva Pio Nono / when 
the troops charged upon the populace and drove 
them from the piazza, arresting, among other per- 
sons, several ladies of high social position. Hav- 
ing made formal protests against the invasion first 
in diplomatic letters, and then in a vigorous allocu- 



218 



Life of Pius IX. 



tion, the Holy Father was compelled to choose 
between exile from Rome and a virtual imprison- 
ment in the Vatican, none the less real because he 
was restrained by moral bonds rather than bars 
and chains. He decided to remain. The reason 
of his choice was beautifully explained by himself 
to Cardinal de Bonnechose, Archbishop of Rouen. 
" I wish," said he to the cardinal one evening, 
after a private audience, " to give you a souvenir." 
It was a little painting on ivory, set in gold, and 
representing a legend of St. Peter. " This," said 
Pius, " has been the frequent subject of my medita- 
tions for several years. When the Prince of the 
Apostles was fleeing from persecution at Rome he 
met not far from the gate of St. Sebastian the 
figure of our Lord carrying his cross and bow- 
ed with sadness. Domine, quo vadis ? — 6 Lord 5 
whither goest thou ? '—cried Peter. ' I go to Rome/ 
said Jesus Christ, 4 to be crucified again in thy 
place, because thou lackest courage. ' Peter under- 
stood, and remained at Rome. I shall do the 
same ; for if I were to quit the Eternal City at this 
moment it seems to me that our Lord would make 
to me the same reproach. Perhaps the story is at 
bottom only a pious legend, but for me it is a 
definite instruction." 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



IN THE VATICAN. 

IN the seclusion of the Vatican the life and cha- 
racter of Pius IX. seemed more beautiful than 
ever. His firmness and courage increased with 
the growing hostility of the world ; his benign and 
loving disposition was only sweetened by trials. A 
charm, always fresh, irradiated his serene counte- 
nance. He grew more and more fascinating in the 
eyes of men as he daily drew closer to God. The 
simple habits which he had established at the begin- 
ning of his pontificate were continued to the end. 
In the palace of eleven thousand rooms he reserved 
only two for his own use. The small sleeping- 
chamber had a bare stone floor, an iron bedstead, a 
hard mattress, a prie-dieu, and little or nothing else. 
The cabinet, or study, was furnished with equal 
plainness, and its walls were hung with common 
paper. He rose summer and winter at half-past 
five, shaved himself, and then went to his private 
oratory, where he spent half an hour before the 
Blessed Sacrament. Then he said Mass. After- 
wards he heard a second Mass, and remained for 
some time in thanksgiving. If he was prevented 
by sickness from offering the Holy Sacrifice, one of 

219 



220 



Life of Pius IX. 



his chaplains always celebrated in his presence and 
gave him communion. About nine he took a cup 
of black coffee or a little thin soup. The rest of 
the morning was devoted to work, either alone or 
with the cardinal-prefects of congregations, who 
conferred with him on set days about the affairs" of 
the universal Church. General audiences, to which 
almost any respectable person could obtain admis- 
sion by introduction, were held about noon. A 
little exercise in the garden sometimes followed, the 
physicians strictly requiring him to take the air at 
least twice a day. So imperatively was this rule de- 
manded by the condition of his health that in his 
latter years, when a humor in the leg often made him 
too lame to walk, a small carriage was bought and 
he was driven around the garden. He dined at two 
o'clock, having previously made a short visit to the 
Blessed Sacrament. The meal, which he took 
alone, according to the rigid etiquette of the Ro- 
man court, seldom lasted more than twenty minutes, 
and consisted of soup, a bit of the beef that had 
been boiled in it, one other dish of meat, one 
dish of vegetables, and fruit. According to the 
universal Italian custom, he mingled a little wine 
with the water that he drank at dinner ; it was a com- 
mon white wine, bought from day to day in Rome, 
for he kept no cellar ; but towards the close of his 
life he used sometimes to take at the end of dinner, 
if he were more fatigued than usual, a small glass 
of claret, of a special vintage which the Sisters of 
St. Joseph at Bordeaux produced for him and called 



In the Vatican, 



221 



by his name. The delicacies sent to him all found 
their way to the hospitals. Somebody persuaded 
him to try the liqueur of the Grande Chartreuse. 
He laughed, and, putting down the glass un- 
finished, said : " It is an excellent liqueur — for the 
stomach of a trooper." Dinner was followed by a 
siesta of fifteen minutes, after which he read the 
breviary, said the rosary, and walked again either in 
the garden or the galleries of the Vatican. One 
of his favorite resorts at this hour was a beautiful 
alley shaded by orange-trees, where the pigeons 
used to feed from his hand. He delighted to show 
himself quicker of foot than the cardinals who bore 
him company, and it was one of his pleasantries to 
speak of the excellent Cardinal Patrizi, who was 
four years his junior, as " that old man." One day 
the Pope and three of the cardinals were discovered 
playing hide-and-seek in the garden with a little 
boy, the brother of one of the Noble Guards. 

From five to nine he worked and gave audiences 
to private and official personages. Cardinal Anto- 
nelli, the Secretary of State, had apartments at the 
Vatican, and others were constantly there during 
working hours on business connected with their con- 
gregations. Supper, consisting of soup, two boiled 
potatoes, and a little fruit, was served at nine ; and 
at ten, after reciting the office and visiting the Bless- 
ed Sacrament again, the Pope retired to his chamber 
— not always to sleep, for it is known that he often 
gave up a part of the night to prayer. Such was 
the calm and gentle outward course of the last years 



222 



Life of Pius IX. 



of this life of battles. Some one congratulated him 
on his peace of soul. " Nevertheless, " said he, " I 
am not made of wood." Sometimes, when the gates 
of St. Peter's were closed for the night, he repair- 
ed to the deserted basilica, and stood in meditation 
before the famous statue of St. Peter, or prostrated 
himself in silent prayer at the tomb of the apostle, 
where Canova's marble figure of Pius VI. kneels in 
perpetual supplication. But from the day of the 
entrance of the Italian troops into Rome the mag- 
nificence of the papal ceremonial at St. Peter's van- 
ished, and the Pope never appeared publicly in his 
own church. 

Many attempts were made by the Italian Gov- 
ernment to establish relations with the Vatican, in 
order to secure at least an indirect and apparent 
sanction of the occupation of Rome, but the Pope 
repulsed all such insincere advances. He would 
do nothing to compromise the claims of the Holy 
See. He refused audiences to all the messengers 
who came to him from time to time on the part of 
the king, and he never would consent that any 
diplomatic representative should be accredited both 
to the Vatican and the Quirinal. 

One morning, at the early hour of seven, the 
Emperor of Brazil, who was then the guest of Vic- 
tor Emanuel, presented himself unexpectedly at the 
Vatican while the Pope was saying Mass, and 
asked for an audience. He was introduced as soon 
as possible. " What can I do to serve your ma- 
jesty ? " asked Pius. 



In the Vatican. 223 

u Holy Father, I beg you not to call me majesty; 
here I am only the Count of Alcantara. " 

" Well, my dear count, what will you have of 
me ? " 

I wish your Holiness to let me present his 
majesty the King of Italy." 

The Pope rose, and answered with energy and 
indignation : " It is useless to hold such language 
with me. Let the King of Piedmont abjure his 
evil deeds and restore my states ; then I will con- 
sent to see him, but not before." 

The Prince and Princess of Wales, who visited 
the Pope in 1872, showed more tact and better 
breeding than the eccentric Brazilian. They had 
the good taste to decline the use of Victor Eman- 
uel's carriages and horses for their ride to the Vati- 
can. The conversation of the Pope and Prince 
is said to have been long, animated, and agreeable. 
" I respect the English," said the Holy Father, 
" for they are more religious at heart than many who 
call themselves Catholics; when they return some 
day to the fold, how gladly we shall welcome this 
flock which has strayed but is not lost ! " 

The Prince and Princess smiled, and gently shook 
their heads. 

" Ah 1 my children, " continued the Pontiff, " the 
future is always full of surprises. Who would have 
imagined two years ago that we should see a Prus- 
sian army in France? Your wisest heads expected 
a thousand times sooner to see the Pope at Malta 
than Louis Napoleon in London. I am much 



224 



Life of Pins IX. 



happier than those who call themselves the masters 
of Rome, because I have no fears for my dynasty. 
God takes care of it. I may be driven away for a 
while; but when your children and your grand- 
children come to visit Rome, whatever may be the 
temporal possessions of the Pope at that time, they 
will see, as you- do to-day, an old man* dressed in 
white pointing out the road to heaven." 

He received Protestants with great kindness, yet 
sometimes with a frank and dignified assertion of 
authority which must have impressed and could 
hardly offend them. " My child, " said he to a 
young minister from Berlin, "you and I ought to 
be friends, for we are sons of the same Father and 
sharers in the same heritage. See, there is only 
one Lord, one faith, one baptism ; that is what is 
called Catholic unity, outside of which there is only 
confusion and there is no salvation. It is the mis- 
fortune of Protestants to be outside. Not that sal- 
vation is impossible among them; there are some 
who will reach heaven because they have lived in 
invincible ignorance (ask the theologians here what 
that means) and their lives have been pious. They 
belong to the Church without knowing it. But it 
is hard to err in good faith here in Rome in the 
focus of evangelical light. As for yourself, my 
dear child, seek truth with a generous heart. I 
say with a generous heart, for you need to seek 
it with the heart even more than with the intel- 
lect. You will find it. Be assured that I will 
help you with my prayers. But, in your turn, do 



In the Vatican. 



225 



you pray for the Pope, and so we shall help each 
other." 

All who presented themselves at the audiences 
were, of course, expected to conform to the eti- 
quette of the court, and Protestants who were 
guilty of deliberate rudeness, as now and then 
some were received a pointed rebuke. A tutor 
employed in the family of Sir Augustus Paget, the 
British diplomatic representative at Rome, ostenta- 
tiously remained seated at a general audience when 
all the guests were expected to kneel. The Pope 
turned to him and said : " My friend, you are not 
obliged to come here, but if you do come you 
must observe the proprieties, whatever sect you be- 
long to." The Englishman, too proud or too ob- 
stinate to submit, left the hall. Sir Augustus Paget 
dismissed him as soon as he heard of the imperti- 
nence. The Holy Father's rebuke of two English 
ladies who refused to kneel when he approached 
them was somewhat different. He took no notice 
of the breach of etiquette at the time, and treated 
them with his customary suavity, but in his closing 
address he said : " I will now give you my blessing, 
and, if there are any here who do not value the 
blessing of an old man, I invoke for them the 
blessing of Almighty God." The two ladies 
dropped upon their knees. To certain clergymen 
of the English High- Church party, who seemed 
indisposed to follow their principles to the logical 
conclusion, he said: "You are like the bells which 
call the faithful to church, but never enter." 



226 



Life of Phis IX. 



It often happened that a majority of the guests 
at an audience were English and American travel- 
lers. On one of these occasions, after speaking to 
each in turn, he came to an English lady, young 
and very timid, and asked where she was born. 

" I am twenty-four," she replied, too much em- 
barrassed to understand the question. 

" I did not ask your age, but your country," 
said the Pope with a smile. 

But her confusion only increased. She fell at his 
feet, sobbing, and cried: "O Holy Father! forgive 
me, please forgive me. I have told a lie; I am 
more than twenty-four — I am twenty-five years and 
two months and a half." 

The Pope raised her up, and, repressing the 
hilarity of the company, calmed her agitation and 
made her promise not to lie again, even about the 
merest trifle. 

His wit was now playful, now caustic. There 
was a photograph representing him under a broad 
and unbecoming red hat. He did not like the pic- 
ture, and, when a lady asked for his autograph on 
a copy of it, he wrote: Nolite timere, ego sw?i — 
" Fear not; it is I." The author of a pious bio- 
graphy sent his book to the Pope for approval. 
The Pontiff read till he came to these words : " Our 
saint triumphed over all temptations, but there was 
one snare which he could not escape : he mar- 
ried," and then he threw the book from him. 
"What!" said he, " shall it be written that the 
Church has six sacraments and one snare?" Of a 



In the Vatican. 



227 



Catholic diplomatist whose conduct and professions 
were at variance he said : " I do not like these ac- 
commodating consciences. If that man's master 
should order him to put me in jail, he would come 
on his knees to tell me I must go, and his wife 
would work me a pair of slippers." During the 
French occupation of Rome a certain French 
colonel was guilty of so gross an offence against 
the Pope's authority that the Holy Father demand- 
ed his recall. Before his departure he had the 
effrontery to present himself at the Vatican and 
ask for a number of small favors, ending with a 
request for the Pope's autograph. The Pontiff 
wrote on a card the words which our Lord ad- 
dressed to Judas in the garden : Amice, ad quid 
ve?iisti? — " Friend, wherefore hast thou come 
hither ? " — and the colonel, who did not under- 
stand Latin, showed it to all his friends as a testi- 
monial of the Pope's regard, until somebody 
unkindly supplied him with the translation. 

It is the etiquette of the Vatican that carriages 
with only one horse shall not enter the inner court. 
This rule was enforced one day in 1867 against 
Baron von Arnim, and Bismarck, for purposes of 
his own, endeavored to make a diplomatic scandal 
of the transaction, instructing the ambassador to 
close the legation and quit Rome instantly unless 
he was allowed to drive with one horse to the very 
foot of the papal staircase. The Pope caused Car- 
dinal Antonelli to write that " His Holiness, taking 
compassion on the embarrassments of the diplo- 



228 



Life of Pius IX. 



matic body, would in future allow the representa- 
tives of the great Powers to approach his presence 
with one quadruped of any sort" — avec un qnadru- 
fiede quelconque. I believe that the Prussian minis- 
ter never availed himself of this permission in its 
full extent ; he certainly did not boast of his diplo- 
matic victory. 

One of the few members of the Roman nobility 
who showed a disposition to coquette with the new 
regime attempted to speak to the Pope in a low 
voice and a confidential manner. " Sir/' said Pius 
aloud, " I do not like men with two faces. I love 
those who show a loyal and Christian countenance, 
and who speak out boldly because they have no- 
thing to hide. ,, To another who was lamenting 
the corruption of society and the impossibility of 
correcting it he said significantly : " You are 
wrong j I know an excellent remedy for these 
evils." 

" What is it, Holy Father ?" 

" Let every man begin by reforming himself." 

A soldier stopped him and complained : " Holy 
Father, I have served twenty -five years, and they 
will not give me a discharge. " 

" Well, my friend, that does not seem fair. I 
have not served twenty-five years yet, but they 
wanted to discharge me long ago. I will see to 
your case." 

The Abbe Chocarne begged the blessing and 
favor of the Pope for a society he had founded in 
aid of penitent prisoners. u Certainly," replied 



In the Vatican. 



229 



Pius ; " I am a prisoner myself — but I am not peni- 
tent." 

The affection shown him in his dethronement by 
the people of Italy was always a particular conso- 
lation to him. Deputations in great numbers came 
from all parts of the peninsula to testify their re- 
gard, and the Romans never seemed to tire of do- 
ing him honor. On the anniversary of the capture 
of Rome it was customary for the Roman nobility 
to present themselves at the Vatican, partly by 
way of renewing their protest against the invasion, 
partly in order to cheer the Holy Father's spirits. 
He was told one day the particulars of a ball given 
by the king in the palace of the Quirinal. " We 
shall have to use tuns and tuns of holy water to 
purify that Quirinal when we get back," said he — 
" we or those who come after us." 

On the 16th of June, 1871, he reached the 
twenty-fifth anniversary of his election to the papa- 
cy, thus falsifying, for the first time in history, the 
popular prediction that no pope should " see the 
years of Peter " — a prediction which even finds a 
place in the ritual of consecration. The day was 
celebrated by impressive services in the basilicas 
of St. Peter and St. John Lateran, attended by 
enormous multitudes of people. Thousands of 
pilgrims came from Italy and from foreign lands 
to offer their felicitations in person, and on one 
of the days devoted to the observance the Pope 
delivered twelve addresses in answer to as many dif- 
ferent deputations from different countries. More 



230 



Life of Pins IX. 



than a thousand messages of compliment were 
received by telegraph, the first that arrived being 
from Queen Victoria. Large sums of money were 
brought by the pilgrims ; and, indeed, the gene- 
rosity of the faithful towards their imprisoned 
bishop was always magnificent. By their con- 
tributions he was enabled to defray the cost of 
the administration of church affairs and the ex- 
penses of the palace and the basilica, to keep up 
the famous Vatican manufacture of mosaics, to 
grant from $125 to $200 a month to the destitute 
Italian bishops, according to their needs, to con- 
tinue certain public works, and to provide many 
schools and asylums in place of those which had 
been destroyed or perverted to irreligious uses by 
the Government of Italy. His private and per- 
sonal charities continued to be enormous, as they 
always had been. But none of his own family ever 
profited in the slightest degree by his elevation to 
the supreme dignity. 

The dreadful oppression of the Church in Ger- 
many and Switzerland, the steady advance of the 
atheistic revolution in Italy, the persecution of 
Catholics in Poland and other parts of the Russian 
Empire with atrocities which the world as yet hardly 
realizes, were afflictions added to the last years of 
the sadly burdened Father of the Faithful. He 
faced them with his habitual courage, and he 
labored to correct the evils of the world with such 
an incessant watchfulness and untiring energy that 
we could hardly think of him as an old man who had 



I In the Vatican. 231 

outlived his own generation. His bold and in- 
spiriting words had the ring of perpetual youth. 
On the 12th of March, 1877, he delivered an allo- 
cution on the subject of a proposed " Law against 
the Abuses of the Clergy," then under considera- 
tion in the Italian Parliament, and it roused Europe 
like a blast of judgment. Almost the last public 
act of his life was a spirited appeal to the Russian 
Government in behalf of the suffering Poles. Pie 
defended the Jesuits in a brief, and he gave a sig- 
nal proof of his affection for their venerable society 
by adding two distinguished Jesuits to the Sacred 
College — Cardinal Tarquini, who was created in 
1873 and died the next year, and Cardinal Franze- 
lin, who was created in 1876. Never had the Col- 
lege of Cardinals been so truly an emblem of the 
catholicity of the Church as it became under his 
enlightened government. All the nations of Chris- 
tendom were represented in it. He gave a car- 
dinal to Ireland. He promoted Dr. Manning to 
the vacant place of the lamented Cardinal Wise- 
man, and conferred a hat upon another Eng- 
lish prelate, Monsignor Howard. He created the 
first American cardinal, Archbishop McCloskey, 
in 1875. He honored the misfortunes and con- 
stancy of the Catholics of Prussian Poland by re- 
warding Archbishop Ledochowski with, the dig- 
nity of prince of the Church, and giving him hospi- 
tality at the Vatican when he was released from 
his cruel imprisonment. 

He was never tired of preaching the power of 



232 Life of Puis IX. 



prayer and the duty of cheerful submission to the 
divine will. A French priest, in thanking him for 
certain favors, exclaimed : "Ah ! Holy Father, how 
I shall pray for your speedy deliverance and the ces- 
sation of persecutions." " Pray, rather," replied the 
Pope, " that the will of God may be done. You and 
I do not know whether it is best that the storm 
should abate so quickly. Persecution is the health 
of the Church/' It has been said that no pope 
ever did so much to promote the glory of God by 
adding to the glory of his saints. He placed hun- 
dreds of martyrs and others on the calendar. He 
enrolled St. Alphonsus de Liguori and St. Francis 
de Sales among the doctors of the Church; and it 
is hardly necessary to remind the reader with how 
much zeal the Pontiff who defined the dogma of the 
Immaculate Conception promoted true devotion to 
the Blessed Virgin. He had a special piety also 
towards St. Joseph, whom, by a decree of Decem- 
ber 8, 187 1, he declared patron of the universal 
Church. A French artist, having received a com- 
mission to paint for the Holy Father a picture sym- 
bolizing the Immaculate Conception, submitted a 
sketch for his Holiness' approval. "It is good," 
said the Pope; "but I do not see St. Joseph." 
The painter replied that he would represent 
him in a group surrounded by clouds of glory. 
"No," rejoined Pius, pointing to the side of Jesus 
Christ ; " put him there. That is his place in 
heaven. n 

The remarkable revival of the devotion to the 



In the Vatican. 



233 



Sacred Heart of Jesus during the last few years was 
fostered by the Holy Father with all earnestness. 
He decreed the beatification of Margaret Mary 
Alacoque, with whose revelations the modern phase 
of this devotion may be said to have originated ; 
and in June, 1875, he consecrated to the Sacred 
Heart the Church throughout the world. He was 
careful, however, to discourage, and even sharply 
condemn, a variety of unauthorized and extrava- 
gant devotions, fantastic in character and now and 
then somewhat superstitious in tendency. 

In the course of this narrative I have tried to 
show how the exercise of the Holy Father's su- 
preme authority gradually suppressed factions within 
the pale of the faith, dispelled the phantom of " na- 
tional " churches, abolished ail differences of theo- 
logical schools, whether at Paris or at Munich, 
settled ancient controversies, drew close the bonds 
of union between the episcopate and its visible head, 
and marked out with startling clearness the lines of 
division between the anti-Christian world and the 
Christian Church. But this was only half of his 
great work. Still more wonderful was the general 
revival of Catholic faith and piety under his foster- 
ing influence. No pope in modern times has been 
so dear to the hearts of the people, or has so 
strongly impressed his personality upon the Catholic 
world. Others commanded the intellectual obe- 
dience of the faithful; Pius spoke directly to their 
hearts. Others were loved, perhaps, by the few 
thousands who lived immediately around them ; 



234 



Life of Pius IX. 



Pius was an object of enthusiastic affection to mil- 
lions all over the world. 

The great movement of pilgrimages, which began 
soon after the Italian occupation of Rome, or per- 
haps may be traced to the still earlier popular de- 
monstrations excited by the different anniversaries 
which have already been mentioned in these pages, 
became an important agency in extending the Pon- 
tiff's influence and hastening the Catholic revival 
of which he was the fervid apostle. In organized 
multitudes like armies, or in small troops of private 
persons, or in family parties, pilgrims travelled to 
Rome from the four quarters of the earth, only to 
kneel at the Pope's feet, to kiss his hand, to receive 
his blessing, and to listen to the burning words 
which flowed from his lips. Almost every day he 
received travellers, and he always had something 
appropriate to say to them. To a deputation from 
the United States in 1873 he said : 

" I am grateful to America fcr these sincere and ener- 
getic protestations which represent, I know, the senti- 
ments of all American Catholics, and I feel especially 
hound to pray for a nation so highly blessed by God in 
the fertility of its soil and its industrial prosperity. Be 
assured that I pray God to increase and fructify these 
gifts ; yet I warn the world that such blessings ought not 
to engrors the affections of those who pDSsessthem. 
North America is incomparably richer than any other 
country- ; but riches should not be its only treasure. In 
the Gospel which I read at Mass this morning Jesus 
Christ says : 1 Where thy treasure is, there is thy heart 
also.' Now, America is a nation devoted to commerce 
and all kinds of traffic ; that is well, for every man must 



In the Vatican. 



235 



provide for the necessaries of life : honest traffic in what 
Providence has given us is permitted to all, and it is 
right that the father of a family should bring up his chil- 
dren in accordance with the exigencies of their proper 
state. There is not the least harm in thinking of all 
that. But the love of wealth must not be carried to ex- 
cess ; you must not attach yourselves too much to it, nor 
chain the heart to the treasures of the earth. This fatal 
worship of a purely material prosperity is condemned by 
Jesus Christ. Our Lord himself had a modest purse ; he 
even had an administrator, who was Judas ; but you 
know whither Judas was carried by his immoderate love 
of money. Have money, then, if you will ; seek honestly 
to increase your store and improve the circumstances of 
your family ; nothing is more just or more natural ; but 
let it be only on condition that your hearts do not be- 
come fastened to the goods of this world, and that you 
do not make them the object of your worship. This is 
the only reflection I wish to suggest before quitting you ; 
for the rest, I adjure you to pray to God. Let us all 
pray that he will ever protect us, and give us strength 
and courage in the midst of the dangers and tribulations 
of the Churc h. Here we are, so to speak, over a volcano, 
and, alas ! the government seems eager to open the 
crater. But God will save us/' 

A large body of pilgrims from the United States 
and Canada visited Rome in 1874. A band of 
nearly 8,000 Spaniards made their way thither in 
1876, and the Pope received them in St. Peter's, 
since there was no room in the Vatican that would 
hold such a multitude. The gates of the church 
were closed, however, to all except the pilgrims. 
In the following summer occurred the fiftieth anni- 
versary of the Holy Father's consecration as a 



236 



Life of Pius IX. 



bishop, and the fervor of the pilgrims reached its 
culmination. The day of the commemoration pro- 
per was the 3d of June, but from the end of April 
to the beginning of July a great tide of strangers, 
as if by a spontaneous and universal impulse, set 
steadily towards the Vatican. There were seven 
or eight separate deputations from France, number- 
ing in th(D aggregate several thousands. There 
were representatives of Rome and many other 
Italian cities. There were eleven bishops, forty 
priests, and about one hundred laymen from the 
United States. There were two bands from Cana- 
da. There were two delegations from Calcutta. 
There were three or four from Germany; three or 
more from Ireland ; others from Poland, Belgium, 
Switzerland, Austria, Holland, Croatia, Portugal, 
Scotland. Three or four days were given up to 
Italy alone. Spain sent 1,000. England despatch- 
ed an imposing body of pilgrims and an address 
signed by 500,000 names. One of the German 
addresses was signed by 200,000 young men. Five 
hundred periodicals were represented by a deputa- 
tion from the Catholic press. An immense number 
of valuable gifts were sent at the same time, and 
when they were displayed at the Vatican the ex- 
position filled several spacious halls. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



THE END. 

An American traveller, describing the appear- 
ance of the Holy Father in 1876, wrote as fol- 
lows : 

" At the reception of the Spaniards to-day it was 
generally remarked that the Pope looked wonderfully 
well and strong. His general health is beyond doubt 
good, although, as he recently said of himself, * One 
cannot be an octogenarian with impunity/ When I first 
saw him, at the audience I have described above, I 
found in his face and figure as he entered the room 
marks of infirmity for which I was not prepared. He 
looks much older than any of his pictures, if I except a 
single recent photograph, which I believe is not known 
in America. His lower lip droops a little, his eye has 
lost much of its lustre, his head hangs over, and his step 
is uncertain. His voice, too, at first was tremulous and 
broken. But in a few minutes my impressions of his 
condition were greatly changed. In conversation his 
whole face lighted up, his speech was firm, his manner 
was vivacious, he looked no longer a feeble old man 
of 84, but a hale and well preserved gentleman of 70. 
When he raised his voice to address the whole assem- 
blage the tones were strong and musical, the articulation 
beautifully clear. He made gestures freely with both 
arms, and I noticed that his hand was as steady as if he 
had nerves of iron. Alarming reports of his impending 
dissolution often reach the papal court — from America 
and elsewhere— but the Pope's friends laugh at them. 

237 



J 



238 Life of Pius IX, 

' When I look over certain of the Italian journals with- 
out finding the news of my last illness and death,' said 
Pius IX. lately, 'it always seems to me as if they had 
forgotien something.' So far as anybody can see, his 
chances of living several years longer are very fair." 

But by the end of the year 1877 it became evi- 
dent that the last hours of this heroic life were near 
at hand. On the 21st of November he received a 
band of pilgrims from Carcassone, in France, and 
addressed them at considerable length and with 
unusual emotion. After this exertion he was for 
nearly a month confined to his room by fever, and 
the wounds in his leg became enlarged. He re- 
covered so far as to resume all the duties of his 
office, and to give audiences daily to the cardinals 
and prelates, and to others who had important 
business with him; but as a matter of prudence the 
general audiences were discontinued. It was im- 
possible for him to say Mass, and an altar was con- 
sequently placed in the room adjoining his bed- 
chamber, where a chaplain celebrated the Holy 
Sacrifice every morning, and the Pope, lying where 
he could see the service through the open door, 
received the Blessed Eucharist. A portable bed 
was contrived, in which he was carried from his 
chamber to his library. Thus, pillowed on his 
couch, his mind clear and active, his temper serene 
and cheerful, his venerable face radiant with love, he 
sank gently to his rest. On the 28th of December 
the cardinals met in consistory around his bed in 
the library, and he delivered his last allocution : 



The End. 



239 



4 ' Venerable Brethren : Your presence to-day in 
such numbers gives us the opportunity which we gladly 
seize to return you and each of you our sincere thanks 
for the kind offices shown us in this time of our illness. 
We thank God that we have found you most faithful 
helpers in bearing the burdens of the apostolic ministry, 
and your virtue and your constant affection have con- 
tributed to lessen the bitterness of our many sufferings. 
But much more we rejoice in your love and zeal. We 
cannot forget that we need daily more and more your 
co-operation, and that of all our brethren and of the 
faithful, to obtain the immediate aid of God for the many 
necessities which press upon us and upon the Church. 
Therefore we urgently exhort you, and especially those 
of you who exercise the episcopal ministry in your dio- 
ceses, as well as all the pastors who preside over the 
Lord's flock throughout the Catholic world, to implore 
the divine clemency, and cause prayers to be offered up 
to God that he may give us amidst the afflictions of our 
body strength of mind to wage vigorously the conflict 
which must be endured, to regard mercifully the labors 
and wrongs of the Church, to forgive us all our sins, and 
for the glory of his name to grant us the gift of good-will 
and the fruits of that peace which the angelic choirs an- 
nounced to mankind at the Saviour's birth." 

Victor Emanuel died on the 9th of! January, 
1878. All the tenderness of the Pope's heart was 
called out by this sudden event. As soon as the 
king's danger was known Pius sent Monsignor 
Marinelli, sacristan of the Apostolic Palaces, to 
offer the dying man the consolations of religion, 
and to bear a message of forgiveness and fatherly 
kindness. Refused entrance by the officials of the 
court, the messenger was despatched again on the 



240 



Life of Pius IX. 



two following days, and was at length admitted on 
the third visit. In his last hours Victor Emanuel 
reconciled himself with the Church by a declara- 
tion, into whose sufficiency the Holy Father had 
no disposition to enquire too closely. " Let us 
show all possible pity," said the Pontiff. The cen- 
sures were removed, the last sacraments were ad- 
ministered, and the churches were opened for the 
funeral services and requiems. 

On the Feast of the Purification, February 2, the 
Pope was well enough to be carried to the throne- 
room, where he received the customary presentation 
of candles from the heads of chapters, colleges, and 
religious orders, and the parish priests of Rome, 
and delivered an impressive discourse without 
apparent fatigue. The next day he was bright 
and cheerful, and even able to walk a little. In 
the night of Wednesday, February 6, he suddenly 
became feverish and strangely feeble. At three 
o'clock on Thursday morning the physicians ad- 
ministered a restorative, which revived him for a 
little while, but at half past four he was seized with 
a fit of shivering, accompanied by difficulty of 
breathing, and his condition was pronounced alarm- 
ing. At half-past eight Monsignor Marinelli ad- 
ministered the Viaticum, and half an hour later he 
gave Extreme Unction. From that time the Holy 
Father grew rapidly worse; but amidst all his pain 
and weakness he was perfectly conscious, calm, 
and happy. Just before noon he took his crucifix 
from beneath his pillow and blessed those who 



The E?id* 



241 



were kneeling around him — Cardinals Biiio, Man- 
ning, Howard, and Martinelli, and several of the 
domestic prelates and officers of the palace. Car- 
dinal Bilio, the grand penitentiary, took his position 
by the bedside and never left it till the end. The 
prayers for the dying were now recited by the 
cardinals, and Pius, though with great difficulty, 
joined in them audibly, adding In domum Domini 
ibimus — " We will go into the house of the Lord." 
When Cardinal Bilio came to the words, Proficiscere 
— " Depart, Christian soul " — he paused. Si, pro- 
ficiscere — " Yes, depart " — said the Pontiff. These 
were his last words. His breathing became more 
painful, but his mind was still clear, and he made 
signs of regret that he could not speak. About two 
o'clock Cardinal Bilio begged him to bless the 
Sacred College, and he lifted his right hand and 
blessed them. Almost immediately afterward he 
became unconscious. Nearly all the cardinals in 
Rome, and a great number of bishops and other 
ecclesiastics, were kneeling in the antechamber. 
At half-past five Cardinal Bilio began to recite the 
sorrowful mysteries of the rosary, but before he had 
finished the death-rattle was heard, and just at the 
hour of the Ave Maria the soul of Pius the Great 
was taken to the arms of God. 

According to custom the body was embalmed, 
and lay in state during the following Sunday, 
Monday, and Tuesday in the chapel of the Blessed 
Sacrament in St. Peter's, where an immense con- 
course of people passed before it. On the night 



242 



Life of Pius IX. 



of Wednesday, the 14th, the final ceremonies of the 
funeral took place within the closed and barred 
basilica, and the coffin was deposited in the plain 
sarcophagus over a door in the chapel of the choir, - 
where the remains of every pope in turn repose 
during the reign of his next successor. There for 
thirty-two years had rested the bones of Gregory 
XVI., and there a marble slab now bears the in- 
scription : 

PIUS IX., p.m. . 

His will left directions for his final interment. 
It was to be in the ancient patriarchal church 
of St. Lawrence-outside-the- Walls, one of the 
" seven churches of Rome" to which pilgrims in 
the primitive ages resorted from all parts of the 
West. " My body shall be buried," reads the will, 
"just under the little arch which is over against 
the graticola, or stone, on which are still to be seen 
the stains produced by the martyrdom of the illus- 
trious Levite. The expense of the monument must 
not exceed four hundred scudi ; on it shall be 
carved the tiara and keys; the only armorial de- 
vice shall be a skull; and the epitaph is to be 
Ossa et cinerei Pit IX., Sum. Pont, vixit an. . . . 
in Pontificate an. . * . Orate pro eo." "The 
bones and ashes of Pius IX., Supreme Pontiff, who 
lived . . . years, in the Pontificate . . « 
years. Pray for him." 

THE END. 



-1 lW> 



